UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
AT LOS ANGELES

A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

AN INTRODUCTION TO METAPHYSICS

BY

JOHN ELOF BOODIN

PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY, CARLETON COLLEGE

ffotfe

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1916

All rights reserved

13G580

COPYRIGHT, 1916,

BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

Set up and electrotyped. Published November, 1916.

NortoooT)

3. B. Gushing Co. — Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.

5925

MY FRIEND AND TEACHER
JOSIAH KOYCE

PREFACE

THIS volume on metaphysics is the sequel of a volume on the
theory of knowledge, entitled "Truth and Reality," which was
published in 1911. The two volumes furnish a survey of the
field of general philosophy from the point of view of pragmatic
realism. This attitude which the author has been champion-
ing for several years is an attempt to apply scientific method
to philosophic problems. The term pragmatic is used in the
sense which was first advocated by C. S. Peirce, and which is
defined by the author in his own terms in "Truth and Reality."
As applied to metaphysics the pragmatic method means that
we must judge the nature of reality, in its various grades and
complexities, by the consequences to the realization of human
purposes, instead of by a priori assumptions. Some may pre-
fer the older adjectives of "empirical" or "critical"; but
these terms seem definitely associated with certain historical
doctrines, and a new term seems to be preferable in designating
the scientific tendency of to-day. There is need in every age
of retranslating the perennial problems of philosophy into terms
of living human interest; and the author hopes in a meas-
ure to further this movement at the present time through these
volumes. In "A Realistic Universe" the author has tried to
make vital the fundamental problems of metaphysics in terms
of our present thought-world, without the cant of the past, but
with a deep sense of indebtedness to the masters of all time.
While the book is intended primarily for the philosophic stu-
dent, the aim has been to make the style as clear and simple
as the problems would permit. In the use of scientific material,
an effort has been made to find sources which would be intel-
ligible to the layman rather than to make an appearance of
erudition. Some portions, such as the introductory chapter
and part five on Form, may be of special interest to the general
reader.

vii

viii PREFACE

The work as it now stands, imperfect as it may be in execu-
tion, has had a long history. The oldest portion is that re-
lating to time. The author's theory of time was first outlined
in a paper on that subject, written for Professor Royce's Semi-
nary in 1897-1898. It found fuller statement in his doctor's
thesis on "The Concept of Time" in 1899; and was further
expounded in a monograph entitled "Time and Reality,"
published in the Psychological Review monograph series, No.
26, in 1904. A brief statement in the Journal of Philosophy,
Psychology and Scientific Methods in 1905 has been partly made
use of in this book. As there has been no material change in
the author's attitude since the publication of the monograph,
the reader may be referred to this for supplementary treatment.
Preliminary studies of the concepts of Space, 1906, Con-
sciousness, 1908, and Energy, 1908, have been published in
the Journal of Philosophy, etc. While the main view-point re-
mains in each case, the material has been thoroughly restated
and should be judged by its present form. The same applies
to the article, "The Ought and Reality," which appeared in
the International Journal of Ethics, 1907, and which in the
present volume has been restated under the title "Form and
the Ought." Other papers which have been made use of, in
whole or in part, are: "Do Things Exist?" 1912, and "In-
dividual and Social Minds," 1913, from the Journal of Phi-
losophy, etc.; "Knowing Things" from the Philosophical Re-
view, 1911; "Knowing Selves," Psychological Review, 1912;
"The Identity of the Ideals" from the International Journal of
Ethics, 1912; "A Rehabilitation of Teleology," under the
title of " Teleological Idealism," from the Harvard Theological
Review, 1912; "Pragmatic Realism — the Five Attributes,"
under the title of "The Five Attributes" from Mind, 1913;
and "The Divine Fivefold Truth" from the Monist, 1911.
The author wishes to express his appreciation to these journals
for their cooperation and encouragement, which have meant a
great deal to a man working in comparative isolation. The
work, however, is in no sense a compilation of articles, but
was early conceived as a systematic unity, though he wished
the advantage of the objectivity and time perspective furnished
by preliminary publication, as well as the incentive that comes

PREFACE ix

from feeling a part of the social consciousness with the informal
reactions thus made possible. In this connection, he wishes
to express also his appreciation to the Western Philosophical
Association, before which many of the preliminary studies were
first read.

As regards his indebtedness to other workers in the field, the
book itself will have to bear testimony. Among philosophers,
his indebtedness is greatest to the standard masters, not only
because of their intrinsic merit, but because they have been
most accessible. In all things speculative, we must still sit
at the feet of the Greek masters. His first systematic training
in philosophy the author received under the tutelage of the
great German idealists, Kant, Fichte, and Hegel, thanks to
his first guide in philosophy, James Seth. From the British
empiricists he has learned, he hopes, a homely regard for the
facts of experience. Of French thinkers, he owes most to
Poincare, whose phenomenal grasp of science and transparent
genius place him in a class by himself among philosophers of
science. Of the author's immediate environment, he hopes
there may appear in this work something of the inspiration
of the great leader in American philosophy, William James,
and of its recent laureate, Josiah Royce. Nor could one
escape the vitalizing influence in our country of its great teacher,
John Dewey, and the Chicago School. . When the author was
working out his theory of time, he did not have the good for-
tune to be acquainted with the brilliant work of Bergson on
that concept. Not even William James seemed conscious of
Bergson's contribution in the later '90's. While the author's
theory agrees with that of Bergson in aiming to establish the
reality of time, both the fundamental intuition and the method
are different. The concept as set forth in this volume, and in
previous discussions, must be regarded, therefore, as a different
concept. In the later revision of the work, the author has
been stimulated by the recent realistic discussions, both in Great
Britain and America. Since the first draft of this work was
completed in 1912, and most of it antedates the movement some-
times called " the new realism," perhaps more properly called
analytical realism, its development has been comparatively
independent of this movement, and has little in common with

X PREFACE

it either in spirit or method. As between the extreme anti-
intellectualism of Bergsonism, and the extreme intellectualism
of analytical realism, pragmatic realism steers a middle course.
While maintaining, as against analytical realism, that reality
is more than a congeries of abstract logical entities, it insists
as against intuitionism on the relevancy of thought to reality.
Only thus could thought furnish valid leadings in our practical
and theoretical conduct. This attitude is in line with com-
mon sense and empirical science.

The present work does not aim to be a compendium of cur-
rent literature. There are books which serve this purpose in
an admirable way. It must be judged rather as a personal
reaction to the permanent problems of human experience, for,
whether we will it or no, our systems are after all personal re-
actions. If they are sincere and thorough, we may hope that
they will further the total movement of truth. The time seems
peculiarly auspicious for such an attempt at synthesis. While
there has been much of suggestion and inspiration in recent
discussion, the constructive efforts have been disappointing.
This is due, no doubt, to the magnitude of the task. In the
complexity of modern thought and life, we cannot perhaps hope
for an Aristotle. What could once be accomplished by in-
dividual genius, must now be carried out piecemeal by the
interstimulation and supplementation of a collective mind.
The author will be satisfied if he can count as even an infinites-
imal part in this infinite task. As this work has grown up for
the most part on the western prairies, may it reflect the homely
sanity of the great West.

NOBTHFIELD, MINNESOTA

September 14, 1916

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION. THE MEANING OF METAPHYSICS
I. PERSPECTIVE. THE DIVINE FIVE-FOLD TRUTH

PAGE

xiii-xxii
3-12

PART I. ENERGY AND THINGS

n. BEING — MATTER AND THE ABSOLUTE . . . 15-32

III. PRAGMATIC ENERGISM 33-61

IV. Do THINGS EXIST? 62-73

V. KNOWING THINGS 74-91

VI. KNOWING THINGS (Continued) 92-112

PART II. CONSCIOUSNESS AND MIND

VII. THE CONCEPT OF CONSCIOUSNESS .... 115-133

VIII. THE CONCEPT OF CONSCIOUSNESS (Continued) . . 134-150

IX. KNOWING MINDS 151-163

X. KNOWING MINDS (Continued) 164-190

XI. INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL MINDS 191-204

PART III. SPACE AND REALITY

XII. PSYCHOLOGICAL AND GEOMETRIC SPACE . . . 207-224
XIII. THE NATURE OF REAL SPACE . . 225-247

PART IV. TIME AND REALITY

XIV. THE NATURE OF TIME 251-282

XV. TIME AND THE PROBLEMATIC 283-303

xi

xii TABLE OF CONTENTS

PAET V. FOKM AND REALITY

CHAPTER PACK

XVI. THE IDENTITY OF THE IDEALS .... 307-325

XVII. FORM AND THE OUGHT 326-359

XVTIL TELEOLOGICAL IDEALISM 360-384

XIX. RETROSPECT — THE FIVE ATTRIBUTES . . . 385-404

INTRODUCTION
THE MEANING OF METAPHYSICS

The Place of Metaphysics, — In this age of narrow special-
ization and absorbing immediate interests, it is well that we
should try to recover what Plato called " the love of the whole-
ness of things, both human and divine." By doing so, we shall
gain greater insight into our special problems and greater
sanity in practical life. For philosophy is merely sustained
thinking about the things that are of vital and permanent con-
cern to the human race in the whirl of circumstance in which
we find ourselves.

There are many reasons for the disrepute into which the
noblest of sciences has fallen in our own day. One of these is
the bias of words. Metaphysics has been confused with ob-
scurantism and occultism ; and professional philosophers are
in a large degree to blame for this. They have been victims
of a traditional vocabulary which once was significant in the
history of thought, but which has ceased to be relevant to
our special matrix of problems. The tendency has been to
substitute counters for things, antique phrases for clear and
distinct ideas. Whenever philosophy has been vital, it has
always followed close upon the heels of science and human in-
terest. It was so that metaphysics originated as a science in
the days of Aristotle. It is so that it has maintained itself
ever since, whether translated into the theological atmosphere
of the Middle Ages, or into the scientific spirit of the age of
Descartes and Locke. To be vital to-day, metaphysics must
clarify our own scientific and social problems.

Another reason is to be found in our narrow emphasis on the
practical. The most dangerous sophist in any age, as Plato
pointed out, is the public sophist, — the prevailing emphasis
of the social mind. To-day, the emphasis is on immediate
material results rather than on the calm contemplation of the

jdii

xiv INTRODUCTION

meaning of things. We are bent on producing weather rather
than on examining its whither. We seem to have raised weather
enough ; and if we persist there will be nothing much to con-
template but ruins. Bitter after-reflection may teach us that
the question is not merely of efficiency ; but to what end ?

Not the least important reason is the slovenliness and laziness
in our present day thinking, which, particularly in our country,
is the outcome of our new education. This is rapidly making
this generation incapable of sustained reflection. Religion has
become a matter of sentimentalism instead of the systematic
interpretation that characterized the Middle Ages and the
Reformation. In philosophy we have substituted intuition
for serious reflection; in science, narrow specialization for
comprehensive perspectives. There is danger that we may
prove unfit for the task of meeting the great social problems of
the day, which will require the most stubborn sort of thought
for their solution. In such an age, we need to hearken back to
Plato's warning that things can only be set right when philoso-
phers are kings; and philosophers are men who can think in
terms of the whole. Indeed, the great masters, whether in the
world of thought or of action, have always been philosophers,
even if they have not always been conscious of the fact.

Though we may neglect metaphysics, we cannot get away
from it. Being of the very nature of reflective thought, it can
say: "When me you fly, I am the wings." Metaphysics, as
Comenius pointed out, begins at the mother's knee. "Thus,
from the moment he begins to speak, the child comes to know
himself, and by his daily experience, certain general and ab-
stract expressions; he comes to comprehend the meaning of
the words something, nothing, thus, otherwise, where, similar,
different; and what are generalizations and the categories
expressed by these words but the rudiments of metaphysics?"
We are thus introduced by social suggestion to the distinctions
of things and qualities, mind and matter, cause and effect,
space and time, the conscious and unconscious. We are taught
to construct a scale of values and to believe in a world of ideals.
Our common sense and science are shot through with meta-
physical concepts. The difference between such metaphysics
and that of the philosophic thinker lies in the degree of thorough-

INTRODUCTION XV

ness with which we pursue such matters. It is clear then that
metaphysics has a permanent claim on human nature. We
may well agree with Aristotle: "All the sciences indeed are
more necessary than this, but none is better."

It must be said, too, that in spite of the shallowness of our
thinking, there is, in our age, a strong feeling for ideals, a sound
faith in melioration which persists undismayed in the baffling
complexity of our problems, and which furnishes the one ray
of hope in a great international tragedy — a promise of better
things. It is at heart an idealistic age — an age of reconstruc-
tion, of profound awakening to human claims. This should
give philosophy a new opportunity in the building out of the
meaning of life.

The Presuppositions of Metaphysics. — A few years ago it was
fashionable to advertise a philosophy without presuppositions.
This would indeed be radical empiricism; but it would be
suicidal at the outset, since to philosophize we must think ;
and thought has its own presuppositions which are implied in
all its procedure, whether metaphysical, or more narrowly
scientific. Metaphysics, as a systematic treatment of ex-
perience, impllies~TogicT It assumes that there are valid rules
of thought, that we can arrive aT common understandings.

BmTmetaphysics, as a final evaluation of experience, implies
more than the laws of thought. It implies a faith in their
fitness or relevancy to our world. We must trust the instru-
ment at the outset. The mute faith in the possibility of knowl-
edge is the very spring of the process. This is fundamentally
an attitude of the will. But it is a constructive attitude, and
justifies itself in the progress of human experience. To criti-
cize the instrument in the abstract is at best a futile task.
Some philosophers have concluded, from certain a priori con-
siderations, that thought is contradictory or inadequate. Kant
finds it suspicious that thought is equipped with certain cate-
gories at the outset. These seem somehow arbitrary; they
carry on their face no guaranty that they fit into the empirical
structure of things. The British agnostics have noted the
relational character of thought, and have assumed for some
traditional or temperamental reason that reality is the un-
conditioned or non-relational. But the fruitfulness of such

xvi INTRODUCTION

thinkers as Kant and Spencer lies, not in their a priori assump-
tions, but in the contribution which they have made to the
correlation of the values of experience by means of the instru-
ment which they mistrusted. Somehow, the laws of thought
must be the laws of things if we are going to attempt a science
of reality. Thought and things are part of one evolving matrix,
and cannot ultimately conflict.

Hegel here shows himself a saner pragmatist. The cate-
gories of thought must be tested by their success in actual use.
If the values of experience can be correlated and unified in
terms of the categories of thought, then thought requires no
other credentials. Its validity is guaranteed by the outcome,
not by any a priori test, which is a mere hewing in vacuo.
We may object to Hegel's own formulation of the fundamental
concepts; we may not share his confidence in the abstractly
logical character of the process thus to be manipulated. His
triadic relations may appear arbitrary and stilted. His sys-'
tern may seem too much like the staging of abstract categories,
and as lacking real movement and zest. But that, after all,
is because he fails as measured in terms of his own criterion —
the success of thought in realizing its concrete leading from part
to part, from corridor to corridor within the complex structure
of reality. The real world is more fluent and complex and
baffling and tragic than Hegel's logic with all its interesting
paradoxes could comprehend. His faith, however, is invincible
and immortal. Let us give thought a fair field at the outset.
Let us not discredit the instrument because it has a character
of its own. It could not be an instrument otherwise. The
universe in its own selective movement forged it, in the long
ages, for just such a world as ours and such needs as ours. The
possibility of its conquests are but dimly foreshadowed as yet.

The important thing is that our concepts shall work; that
they shall blend into the concrete process of life for which they
are made, and out of which they are selected. If they are
relevant, they cannot be arbitrary, — not "appearances" in
the sense of unreal, even though they are at best abstract
aspects of reality. They are not only convenient tools, but
part and parcel of the world which they enable us to predict,
use, and appreciate. To criticize thought independently of its

INTRODUCTION xvii

function in experience is as senseless as would be a baby's
criticism of its fitness for walking by an abstract examination
of its anatomy. The impulse to walk and the development
of the anatomy are part of a single movement. We learn to
walk by following the impulse to walk ; and we learn the nature
of things by repeated efforts to use the instrument of thought.
In each case, the implied faith is justified by its success.

While we must have faith in the relevancy of thought, we
must not prejudice the outcome of thought's experiment by
our assumptions. Perhaps it is not true that the object, in
order to make a difference to our reflective purposes, must it-
self be purposive through and through. Perhaps, on the other
hand, reality is more rational than our ignorance and im-
patience assumed. Perhaps there are no simple entities, ex-
cept as we so treat them for our pragmatic purposes. Perhaps
relations cannot be resolved into either the internal or external
type exclusively. Perhaps our values may be guaranteed, or
at any rate have all the guarantee they do have, in a pluralistic
and temporal world as well as in an absolutistic and eternal.
At any rate we must be free to follow the leading of our ex-
periments. The postulates of thought and the postulate of
their relevancy seem to be all that are required in so funda-
mental an inquiry. And these too must be justified by their
success, for the laws of thought can rise to clearness and dis-
tinctness only through their use.

For the dogmatic method, too often applied in matters of
philosophy, we must substitute the empirical or critical method
— the method which the special sciences have proved so fruit-
ful in their own domain. It is not the province of metaphysics
to dictate to reality what it must be, but to discover its funda-
mental meaning. It is only when pursued in this spirit that
metaphysics can take rank as a science, and, at least in its
ideal, as the science of sciences.

THE FUNCTION OF METAPHYSICS

It has been asserted that the acceptance of philosophies has
nothing to do with their truth, but with their congeniality to
people's passions and prejudices. This seems indeed to be
true to a large extent in our imperfect and uncertain evolution,

xviii INTRODUCTION

where our mutual blindness plays such a large part in the
acceptance of beliefs. It often seems, in the snail's pace of
the many, that ideas only gain acceptance after they are an-
tiquated and then as obstacles to further progress. Thus
Aristotle is accepted as a dogma to defeat the progress of
modern science. It would seem that society, by the very
law of its development, is bound to feed upon the illusions of
yesterday. Its progress is ever unwilling. It is ever moving
with its back to the light. It is ever making martyrs of its
prophets.

In thus arraigning society, however, we are losing sight of
the fact that human nature has other claims to satisfy beside
those of pure truth. The primitive law of society, as of the
individual, is self-preservation ; and to this end it must ever
watch with jealous care the introduction of new gods. In-
dividual insight is ever the disturber of the social equilibrium,
which insists on standardized beliefs. The human Prometheus,
therefore, must pay the penalty of his profanity in stealing fire
from heaven. The new claims must be put upon the rack and
tried out with reference to the other claims of human nature,
before the social instinct of self-preservation is set at rest. It
is useless to rail against this law of nature. We are all part of
it. Our tolerance extends merely to the trivial. When any
profound revolution is threatened, we agree that it is expedient
that one man suffer rather than the whole people perish.

If we were merely logic machines, materialism as a philoso-
phy would doubtless triumph. The mechanical view has cer-
tainly the advantage of simplicity. But the simplest theory
is not necessarily true. A theory must be sufficient as well as
simple. It must be capable of harmonizing all the claims.
And the facts may be richer than materialism, with its mathe-
matical models, assumes. The universe is not merely a place
for the play of our logical faculty. It must in some way own
our other ideal demands. Philosophies must do justice to
our whole human nature. They must satisfy our emotional
and volitional nature, as well as our intellectual. And society
has always regarded logic as secondary to its security and
happiness. We build philosophies and air castles for the
spirit, as we build houses for the body, to keep out the blast

INTRODUCTION xix

and cold of an unfriendly and fickle cosmic weather. Philosophy
has its value in appealing to our sentiments of courage and
justice, of love and hope, as well as to our sense for fact. When
we are hit by the blind vicissitudes of fortune, whether the
scourges of nature in the form of pestilence and famine or the
human curses of envy, hatred, and malice, it is well if we can
say with Socrates : "No evil can happen to a good man either
in life or after death."

And so it is that the agnostics and sceptics, brilliant though
they may have been, and though the advantage of logic has
often been on their side, have scarcely counted in the history
of society. They are the mere curios of the philosophical
closet. If they have been preserved, it has been only through
the social indignation and refutation which they have occa-
sioned. The effective systems of philosophy are tremendous
affirmations of faith — faith in human society and its under-
lying ideals. While one set of facts may apparently be as true
as another, some facts are worth more than others in the economy
of human life. Since truth is a program of life, such emphases
as open up the future, as furnish the largest scope of activity,
naturally prevail in human interest. Hence, idealism will
always triumph over materialism, even though the latter may
be more economic ; for philosophy exists in part for ennobling
life, for enhancing the prospect, not merely as the echo of a
day that is gone, of a life's sun which has known its setting.

Idealistic systems have, one and all, been romantic exaggera-
tions. But they invite to effort and melioration, to faith and
hope: "God's in his heaven, all's well with the world." The
fault lies in us, and can be cured. The exaggeration of promise
serves as a compensation for the seeming bankruptcy of our
temporal life. The greater the odds, the greater is the in-
toxication of hope that is required to balance. Hence idealism
has flourished best in the face of national crises and misfor-
tunes, whether in an Athens stripped of its power, an exiled
Israel, or an over-run Germany. It is then that the kingdom-
not-of-this-world stands out in strongest relief. The roman-
ticism of youth will always be indispensable for overcoming
the disappointments of our work-a-day life. The faith of a
Plato that only the Good is ultimately real; of a Kant that

XX INTRODUCTION

our moral consciousness legislates to the universe ; of a Fichte
that the world of sense, stubborn though it be, is but the stag-
ing and raw material for realizing the moral law; of a Hegel
that, in spite of all seeming blindness and chance, the world is
a rational whole ; of a Royce that loyalty to the ideal is the
supreme key to reality — all these are noble poems which, even
by their exaggerations, will continue to inspire the race, long
after the more rigid systems are forgotten. Friendship, love,
and hope require idealization to live ; and so we need the ex-
aggeration of the romanticists. Since in ultimate things we
can know so little that is true, human nature will insist on hold-
ing fast to that which seems to it a good, trusting that in the
end this may lead it nearer to the true.

Is this idealizing function of human nature altogether an
illusion? It must exist for a use, prominent since it is in the
evolution and welfare of man. There are two views possible
of this function. We may regard it as a sort of protective
covering provided by nature for a highly sensitive animal against
the icy blasts of circumstance, to shield him against inevitable
disappointments; or we may regard it as the small voice of
the universe, however imperfectly understood. In the former
case, it becomes indeed an unaccountable illusion, which fails
of its purpose the moment man ceases to be the dupe 'of na-
ture's trick, and learns the profound lesson that there are only
atoms and the void. In the latter case, it points to the true
vocation of man.

Since the function of both art and metaphysics is to idealize
life, to grasp its deeper meaning, the relation between them has
often been emphasized. It has been pointed out that their
motive is fundamentally the same, viz. the discovery of har-
mony. For Poincare" it is "harmony expressed by mathematical
laws. It is this harmony then which is the sole objective reality,
the only truth we can attain ; and when I add that the universal
harmony of the world is the source of all beauty, it will be under-
stood what price we should attach to the slow and difficult
progress which little by little enables us to know it better." *
But though the same feeling for unity and fitness underlies both
activities, neither the method nor the result are the same.

1 " The Value of Science," p. 14.

INTRODUCTION

We cannot agree with those who would substitute the mystical
and artistic approach for the logical, and who insist that, in
order really to know, we must supersede thought by intui-
tion, logic by immediate appreciation. It is true that both in
art and metaphysics there must be analysis of the primitive
situation. In each case, these aspects must be supplemented
with the concrete fullness of experience in the realized purpose.
I But in art, this supplementation must take place by means of
spontaneous suggestion, in metaphysics by awake and articulate
recognition. In the former, the instrument or leading fuses
with the totality sought; in the latter, the externality of the
instrument to its outcome is emphasized. In art, the selective
activity is for the sake of permanent objects of enjoyment;
in metaphysics, for the sake of understanding. Metaphysics
is science, not art.

Problems of Metaphysics. — Metaphysics has been spoken of
as the common corridor of the specific types of idealizing ac-
tivity. As a corridor it serves a double purpose. It opens up
into the special compartments of truth. It implies, and fur-
nishes the inspiration of, the special sciences. It is the expres-
sion of the underlying faith which leads man to seek for unity
and wholeness in our seemingly chaotic world. It is indeed the
oldest of the sciences — the mother of science. It is also the
terminus and clearing house of the specific activities for truth.
It deals with the common and overlapping problems, left over
by the special sciences. It is thus the heir of the sciences. It
must ever be present as a regulative ideal in all our search for
truth. It indicates the ultimate direction and meaning of all
our ideal striving. Historically and logically, therefore, it is
the Alpha and Omega of our attempts to understand and ap-
preciate our world. Like a perspective from some high moun-
tain, it necessarily blurs details in emphasizing the main con-
tours of the landscape. At best, it is an outlook rather than
an absolute scheme, a temper of mind rather than a finished re-
sult. But as such, it corrects our partial emphases and con-
duces to sanity. Often misunderstood, it cannot be avoided
so long as we have last beliefs, and act upon them.

It has been customary to divide the problems of metaphysics
into two types — ontology and cosmology. Ontology has

xxii INTRODUCTION

dealt with the problem of being or stuff. It has attempted to
answer the question whether reality consists of such stuff as
dreams are made of, or the seemingly solid stuff of sense quali-
ties, or a combination of the two. It has also examined into
the factual relations of things, such as causal, spatial, and tem-
poral relations. Cosmology, on the other hand, has been con-
cerned with the ultimate form, purpose, or meaning of our world,
and has been closely allied with religion. The division does
not seem fortunate, since the aspect of form or purpose has as
real an existence as the stuff aspect and its factual relations.
Hence there has necessarily been a great deal of confusion and
overlapping.

The division of problems in this book is based upon certain
ultimate and generic concepts, viz. energy, consciousness, space,
time, and form. Those who cling to the traditional division
of ontology and cosmology may find solace in the fact that the
first four parts, viz. those that deal with energy, consciousness,
space, and time, may be classed under the traditional heading
of ontology, and the fifth part, which deals with form, under
the heading of cosmology. The old heads, however, have
little pragmatic value and should give way to a more scientific
division of problems.

I have departed from the old custom of giving a cut and
dried summary at the beginning. Instead of that, I have
tried to give a concrete picture of the problems in the first
chapter. Philosophy must begin with intuition, however
severe may be its method. It is hoped that this imaginative
statement may be a help to the elementary student, even though
it offend the pedant. A more technical summary will be found
in the last chapter, and the professional philosopher may prefer
to turn to it at the outset.

A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

CHAPTER I
PERSPECTIVE: THE DIVINE FIVE-FOLD TRUTH

IT is the holy stillness of night. The world with its busy
cares is asleep. And that is the witching hour of divine philos-
ophy. In the silence, a Spirit comes to me and bids me write.
Is it inspiration ? Or is it the fever of the night's vigil ? I do
not know. But, somehow, my soul seems calm and I seem to
see in a sort of mystic way the meaning of things which were
dark before. At least I will obey the muse to-night and trust
in the leading of the Spirit, for this seems like no human in-
sight. Tarry, sweet Muse. The night is young. I would
fain revel in glorious discourse. At other times I have spoken
through the long processes of logic. To-night, I would fain
speak as an oracle.

The Divine Truth of "Being"

First of all, there comes to me the old and divine truth of
"being" — not static, inert "being," but constellations of
energy, conscious and unconscious, interlocking and interact-
ing in space. Worlds rise and dissolve like smoke wreaths,
with ever- varying cadences. Yet through all the shifting forms
laws prevail ; and we gnats of a day, that are borne upon this
stream of change, can, to a degree, forecast the future from the
lingering shadows of the past. In each stage of creative trans-
mutation, reality speaks to those that can understand : " that
am I." In spots, and for a cosmic instant, energy collects and
condenses into material centers. These centers, through their
mysterious, dynamic threads hang together as a whole. You
can pass on the light beams from one to the other, even to the
last. They dance together in mathematical rhythm in cos-
mic space; and, in the infinite ages at least, carry on a fair
exchange of measure for measure. And part, at least, have
life and mind and can catch the meaning of their relationship.

3

4 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

Spinoza, the God-intoxicated, had a vision of the universe as
two winding corridors ; each variegated fresco of one is imitated
in the other, for the order of thought and things is the same.
Each voice in one has its echo in the other, for the mind is the
idea of the body. Proceed as you may through the infinite
windings of one, no window opens into the other. But if eye
hath not seen nor ear heard, and if it hath not entered into the
thought of man that there is another half-world, is it more than
the shadow of man's mind? And if any one doubts the exist-
ence of the other corridor, who shall prove it? Spinoza, in
the passion of his fancy, supposed that if things exist, and if
we become conscious of things, then things must be repeated.
But things are just such as we must meet them and appreciate
them in the wide, common corridor of experience. No blind
wall separates experience from the world of its interest and
love; thoughts and things are part of one divine context.
It is through thoughts that we can use things, and things
become significant by entering into the context of thought.
Thought and things are not two halls, but relationships within
one dynamic living world. There is only one window to the
significance of the world of things, and that is thought, though
things may hang in their own context, without being thought.

Whatever varieties of energy science may establish, what-
ever identities and equivalences it may trace in the flux of
process, one thing is sure, mind which passes in survey the
motley array cannot be declared unreal. For mind alone knows
itself first hand for what it is, is aware of its own activity and
meaning. Whether we find it convenient to make mind thin
enough to cover the whole extent of being, or must recognize
other types of energy, at any rate mind can never reason it-
self out of existence, can never make itself an accident in a
world which sets itself the vocation to understand and control.
Mind by virtue of its history and claims must be fundamentally
at home in the universe. Its purposes alone can make clear
the grades and complexities of "being." Mind is not a by-
play but, in the words of Plato, "a noble and commanding
thing."

But " being " is not, as falsely supposed by many an inspired
genius, the only door to reality. It has been the habit of man

PERSPECTIVE : THE DIVINE FIVE-FOLD TRUTH 5

thus far to emphasize some aspects and read out other aspects
of reality, according to his temperamental, intellectual, or prac-
tical bias. In this he has usually been right in the importance
of the aspects he has read in, and wrong in the aspects he has
read out. Thus the Eleatics of all time are quite right, that
there must be " being" — stuff, constancies, thickness, grist.
But because there must be thickness, must there be absolute
thickness, absolute constancy? Could not science and prac-
tical life get on with relative constancy? So far as our ex-
perience goes, we do so get on ; and in a manner find our way
from part to part within the checkered woof of reality.

The Divine Truth of Time

Instead of writing a poem to the solid, as Parmenides does,
why not write a poem, as Heraclitus does, to divine flux, with
all its sadness and novelty? Our hopes and aspirations, as
well as our doubts and fears, are built upon the consciousness
that the universe is not absolutely made, but in the making;
that the future may divorce the present, however firmly thought
and its object are wedded now — sometimes by altering our
attitudes, when the facts we intend seem constant ; sometimes
by altering the facts in conformity with our more constant
ideals. But our attitudes are facts, too, part of the dance of
attention in the ever-shifting focus of object and interest in
the drama of experience. Like a magician, time converts the
death of winter into the bloom of spring. Like dew upon the
flowers, it makes childhood open into youth. Like summer it
comes into our veins. Like a lapwing in the night, time
steals upon us and we are old. Even while we sleep it trans-
forms our values and purposes. Like moth and rust it creeps
into our equations and facts. However viewed it is true that
reality is vibrant, that it is ever in solution, that it glows. And
no static view can ever piece together this motion and life of
real process. We can hold only part of reality in the net of
our concepts, the rest trickles through. And while the con-
stant residue is more important for science, what trickles through
may be the more characteristic of life.

True, we cannot prove from the fact of change, any particular
change or rate of change, nor deny any particular constancy.

6 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

The processes of the universe travel at diverse paces. We must
take the substances of the reality which time transforms, each
after its kind. But we can prove that if there is change, there
must always be change. For, in the infinite aeons, if tune or
change were finite, it must have run its course untold ages ago.
Change must be taken as real and underived, prior to all our
ideal measurements, if it exists at all. This change value, I call
time. Let the paean be chanted to eternal time — double-
visaged time, with hoar frost on the brow looking backward,
and the fire of youth in the face looking forward, fading Autumn
and budding Spring in one.

If we center our interest on the flowing, the novel and the
irreversible, we can easily fall into the mood that only the flow
is real ; that the flux is absolute and that there is no such thing
as constancy, or truth even in part; that the transforming of
the stuff of meanings and of matters is the real and that uni-
formities are but illusions. With Omar Khayyam we may come

to say :

" One thing at least is certain — This life flies :
One thing is certain and the rest is Lies ;
The flower that once has blown forever dies."

Yes, all that is born in the pangs of earthly beauty shall fade
and die. This would be infinitely sad, if spring and youth were
not reborn with new beauty at the turn of the year. But
while "the bird is on the wing," why deny such seeming perch-
ings, such constancy as there is, such prediction as experience
proves? While the hues of the shadows flit and blend into
each other on the face of the mountain in a thunderstorm, still
the outlines of the mountain show us the course of the change ;
and while the torrent hastens to the sea, the scenery of the
banks helps us to gauge its swiftness. So do the more perma-
nent fringes of meaning and tendency help us to take stock of
the fleeting values of our own life.

The Divine Truth of Space

And why should not some one write a poem to the void —
the glorious expanse of space? For what a congested world
this would be if it were condensed into a mathematical point
— no looking at each other, no embraces, no starry heavens,

PERSPECTIVE : THE DIVINE FIVE-FOLD TRUTH 7

no gravitational equipoises of swinging masses, no differentia-
tion of individual centers, no canvas for the cosmic artist to
spread his sunsets on, no marshaling of the ranks of tonal har-
monies as a result of this absolute condensation — all for want
of room. If you have space, you can put as many holes into
it as may be necessary, shooting it through with energetic
centers, conscious and non-conscious. You can stretch your
gravitational threads, you can pour in your luminiferous ether
and spread out your electro-magnetic field; you can fill it as
full as imagination and convenience may dictate. On its
neutral background you can paint as great a variety of star
patterns, of cosmic tragedies and comedies, as the necessities
of nature and the artistic genius of the universe may prescribe.

I would not make space everything, carving a world out of
it by means of geometrical figures as some have done. Our
imagination at least is too finite to create a universe out of
nothing, whatever an infinite mind might do. But, in any
case, you must presuppose your space, which you so thanklessly
ignore, to have your side-by-sideness of centers, your free
mobility, your perfect conductivity. No hindrances there to
the wheels of Charles's Wain, no opaqueness to the mercurial
messengers of light, — only sublime distances making feeble
man's artificial measures, where constellations dart through
space to the Pleiades. Viewed from the side of space, your
bodies and energies become interferences — departures from
the pure limit with which we start.

It is true that in the poetry of science, the limitations of
space are being annihilated for many practical purposes. The
electric network of nerves under human control binds humanity
together for social sympathy and cooperation as never before.
But it is also true that science has revealed the wonders of
space to us in a new light, as its equations of distance, both in
the large interstellar world and in the minute interactions of
things, bankrupt the resources of our imagination. At any
rate, so long as distance thwarts the will's realization in the
handclasp of loyal men, the meeting of fond lips, and the em-
brace of loving hearts, space must be recognized as real. To
divine, neglected space, bespangled with many a star for diadem
and begirdled with lightning, let my song go forth.

8 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

The Divine Truth of Consciousness

And what shall I say of consciousness, illuminating nature,
the manifold world of process and its flow? To be sure, it
would not appear except for the complexity of the world of
process — its organs and contexts of relations. But they in
turn would have no significance or value apart from the divine
light of consciousness. It was a noble insight, that of the
Sankyah philosophy in far-off days and climes. It is only as
nature (Prakriti) develops senses and intellect on the one
hand, to match the motley variety of the world on the other,
that consciousness can illume the world. It is nature that
furnishes the subject and the content too. Consciousness is a
neutral light. It adds only the awareness. It cannot be
responsible for plurality of egos, .any more than for unity, as
the Sankyah supposed. Nor does nature vanish with con-
sciousness, but with it becomes significant nature, aware of
its pulse beats and its destiny. In itself, consciousness has
no variety, no color, no direction. But with it comes to light
the color and variety and meaning of this whole checkered,
flowing world. No wonder the Sankyah philosophers, with
their longing for mystical peace, for the negation of strife and
variety, centered their gaze on neutral consciousness and al-
lowed nature to vanish with the abstraction of attention.

How long before the mysterious awakening ; what vicissitudes
of change; what migration of spirit through cosmic spaces;
what dizzy ages of evolution of organs and of mind, before my
spirit saw the light, who can tell? Who can follow the journey
of mind through geologic ages? Who knows whether it is a
hardy native plant, grown up hi the cosmic weather of our
earth, fraught perhaps with unconscious memory, chastened
through suffering, selected by nature's breeding from the
simpler stages of life below; or whether it is a divine gift,
groping its way in the dark to its father's house? But when
consciousness does illumine the patient face of nature, what
beauty of significance is there — in part expressed ; in part
vaguely felt and only half understood. What opportunity is
there for sharing in the directive creation of the divine destiny,
which nursed us to this end. Elsewhere, no doubt, the light

PERSPECTIVE : THE DIVINE FIVE-FOLD TRUTH 9

has shone before ; soon the light here shall flicker and go out
again, as the soul goes forth to its new mysterious birth. All
this — the before and after — is hidden in the night of our
ignorance, but how glorious to be awake just now, to catch
to-night this glimpse of the eternal procession of the ages.
Whatever may be the destiny of mind in the cosmic whirl of
change, thank God for this.

When I take my journey in the sea of energies, midst ethers
and star dust, perchance through skies and clouds to stars un-
known, perhaps to linger here midst dance of circumstance,
who can tell when and how I shall appear ? But I believe that
the light of consciousness shall shine for me again ; that I shall
see anew the glory of God's world; that I shall feel the sym-
pathetic touch in the march of the aeons as I never have be-
fore. If so, what does it matter how long I sleep, waiting for
the call of God's energies to the beauteous vision? To con-
sciousness, lighting the world, in one flash of interest and value
bringing groping will and matter face to face, let my hymn be
sung.

The Divine Truth of Form

And, then, what hymn can I sing worthy of the glorious
divinity of form? For who would want a chaos of moving
pictures like the nightmare of a dream? The consciousness of
such a crazy quilt would be even less to be desired than the
annihilation of Nirvana. But we have the conviction that
some facts are worth more than others. In the shifting and
relative shapes of the flux, the soul comes to the insight, now
and then, of eternal beauty. Restless sound is woven into
harmony, the chaos of color into divine form and expression.
The world of things, to some extent, can be recreated into the
world of ideals. Who can wonder that Plato found the idea
of form, of significant unity, diviner than all the flux in space
and would allow to worth alone the prize of being ?

Let the materialist claim that beauty is a physiological re-
lation; that it depends on a certain structure and its motor
reactions. He does not contradict the diviner insight that
form — significant relationship — is an original and underived
aspect of reality. True, reality must prepare the spirit for

10 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

its realization and appreciation by preparing the organism.
Nature must construct an ^Eolian harp to vibrate with the
universe of tones. It must invent a photochemic film to give
us the many colored rays of cosmic light. In the conflicts of
experience it must bring to clearness and distinctness the
instinct for fitness and order. Beauty and right come to us
first as intuitions, before we can understand or separate the
form from the matter. But if we are nurtured in the lap of
nature to the end that we may become conscious of form and
beauty, then it must be true that beauty suffuses the whole of
things; that the flux has worth only as it is sifted through
eternal form; that nature's beauty and, still better, our con-
scious creation of beauty, is the imitation of a reality of which
we have but a vague intimation, an objective world of form,
interpenetrating our world of sense, and, in the long series of
mutations and survivals of history, constituting our human
nature. Looked at from the side of process, nature is a lavish
creator, and some of its gifts also have form as read or ap-
preciated by human nature. This is not mere chance. It is
part of the selective evolution of reality, for human nature is
part of nature. Beauty is but nature become conscious of its
formal character through its more developed organs of human
nature. Thus do nature and human nature conspire to produce
the sunset and the symphony.

In human nature, nature discovers her own order, recognizes
the rhythmic pulse beats of her restless activity. Her immanent
tendencies become ideals, her direction organized purpose.
And this human nature, while it lightens to an extent the past,
is but the prophecy as yet of the larger overarching and over-
lapping form toward which the universe in its highest reaches
is aiming — that free realization of an ideal where work and
play blend in the fluent and joyous activity of spirit.

As the music of each passing moment dies into the recessional
of the past, one thing remains amidst the changes and chances
of clashing masses and souls — the direction of the process.
That, at least, is absolute, eternal and divine. What is this
direction? Is it more than that the universe in patches ex-
presses ideals and so becomes immortalized ? Is there a grand
finale? If time is infinite, this should have come to pass in-

PERSPECTIVE: THE DIVINE FIVE-FOLD TRUTH 11

finite ages ago. Yet for a superior insight, the patchwork
may be a scheme. That it is so remains for us an act of faith
— a faith that, in the drift of cosmic weather,

" Before me, even as behind,
God is, and all is well."

This faith like every faith must be justified and transformed
in terms of our growing experience. For on the shifting sea of
life, the horizon must ever move forward with the progress of
the journey, as we steer towards an unknown goal. We can
catch the direction in part only by looking backward at the
glittering wake of the past. Unseen insights, new adventures,
unpredicted accidents confront us in the unknown. But the
brave souls who search anxiously for the leading and who follow
the light as God gives them to see the light shall arrive. For
through it all, we believe, there runs the silver thread of order,
the cheering message of the beyond.

The conclusion of my poem, which I can but feebly express,
shall be that I own the supplementing concreteness, the real
thickness of life as all of these, interpenetrating in one common
world. Reality reveals itself in five different ways. It has
five windows. It reveals itself to our purposive endeavor as a
world of restless energies with their relative uniformities. It
reveals itself further as time, which in the flux of selves and
things gives the lie to the past and creates for the soul new
mansions of meaning and value. We must also orient our-
selves to space, the playground of energies where the heavens
spread out like a curtain and clouds are moved back and forth
as draperies. Under certain conditions of complexity and in-
tensity, the whole is lighted up by consciousness; and lastly
running through it all as the invisible warp of the many-colored
woof there must be form — the direction which our finite minds
strive to unravel. This is the Divine Fivefold Truth — the
five doors which we must enter if we would bask in the divine
illuminating wisdom,

The night is far spent. The intoxication of soul is wearing
off. The cock crows, announcing that matins is at hand.
The goddess of drowsy slumber will soon lift her silver veil

12 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

from off the naked earth and depart. The bustling, jostling,
wakeful, petty cares will return with the dawn. I thank thee,
Spirit, for divine philosophy. May it prove sane when viewed
in the glaring light of day. At least the bliss was great, while
it lasted. And now into Thy care I commit my mind, while I,
too, join the unconscious world in the soft arms of sleep.

PAET I
ENERGY AND THINGS

•c

CHAPTER II

BEING — MATTER AND THE ABSOLUTE

THE story of the concept of being is a long one and consti-
tutes pretty much the whole story of philosophy. From Thales
down, men have tried to simplify our world by reducing it to
some Urstoff, some simple entity or entities in terms of which
the motley variety of our world might be expressed and under-
stood. It might be water, it might be fire, it might be material
atoms, it might be mind, it might be electricity, it might be
some combination of elements. In any case 'the human mind
has felt more at ease in the world when it has thus simplified
it. But whatever may be our opinion of Urstoff, upon one
thing we are now agreed, that experience stuff, as revealed in
our immediate feelings and sensations, on the one hand, and
our purposive construction, on the other, must be the starting
point of all our investigations. In terms of this we must differ-
entiate and express the problems of the universe in so far as
they can be expressed. But is reality through and through
experience?

7s Experience Self-sufficient?

It has been maintained from time to time, and recently by
so brilliant an advocate as William James, that experience is
self-sufficient; that our hypotheses "lean on experience but
experience leans on nothing but itself" ; and that we have no
need, therefore, of any reference outside of experience. While
it is true that the process of knowing must thus lean on experi-
ence, must take account of the properties and relations, the
similarities and differences, the novelties and uniformities as
they appear from moment to moment in the stream of con-
sciousness, this does not seem a sufficient account of reality
as a whole. If we examine the implications of experience

15

16 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

more closel>, we shall find that our experience, at any rate,
seems to depend in many ways upon an extra-experiential con-
stitution. I shall mention a few cases in which experience, in
the sense of conscious experience, implies such a constitution.

For one thing, experience does not account for its own con-
tinuity, either as involved in intersubjective relations in space
or in the bridging over from moment to moment in time. Let
us examine the former type of continuity first : in order for
two egos to come to an understanding with each other, or to
communicate their feelings and ideas by means of "winged
words," something more is necessary than their respective
fields of consciousness. Certain instrumental processes must
be interpolated. There are the physiological movements pro-
duced by the speaker, the air waves of the common physical
continuum which takes up these movements, and finally the
end-organs and nervous system, reacting to these stimuli.
Now these intermediate bearers cannot be regarded as experi-
ence in their own right. Even the immediatist, unless he is a
solipsist, would have to admit that other people's immediacy
is not his immediacy, but is communicated by means of inter-
mediary processes. This would be true even on a telepathic
hypothesis. How it is possible, by means of such non-conscious
intermediaries, for conscious egos to meet in a common world,
we cannot discuss here.1

In the second place, we cannot account for the continuity of
experience in time, any more than in space, as leaning upon
nothing but experience. To use James's illustration : Peter and
Paul go to sleep in the same bed ; and while not conscious in the
meantime, so far as evidence proves, each one, on waking up,
is immediately aware of his own past, and one does not get
mixed up with the other. Such continuity, bridging over the
intervals between our waking moments, must require some-
thing besides experience. The reason that experience in wak-
ing connects with experience before going to sleep is that both
lean for records upon a world of processes which is not experi-
ential. The machinery of association, upon which the living-
over of experience depends, is not itself experience. The
same idea might be illustrated equally well with reference to

1 See Chapter XI.

BEING — MATTER AND THE ABSOLUTE 17

social experience or the funded knowledge of the race. Clay
tablets, constituting libraries of ancient lore, have been un-
earthed in recent years in the Orient. These records of stored-
up mind became significant anew as experience, after thou-
sands of years, when they were unearthed and deciphered by
recent discoverers. Perhaps you retort that they were possible
experience in the meantime. But what does possible experi-
ence mean in such a case except that they were not experience,
until they became continuous, as perception and interpreta-
tion, with human beings who stumbled upon the libraries?
The phrase "possible experience" only hides the problem; and
if it means anything when pressed home, it is that experience
sometimes leans upon processes that are not experience.
Whether within individual history, therefore, or within the
history of the race, it is evident that, when you try to explain
its temporal continuity, experience leans upon an extra-experi-
ential constitution.

What I have shown with reference to continuity might be
shown equally well with reference to interest. Take, for ex-
ample, a case of primary interest. Why do brilliant things,
moving things, loud things, things to suck, etc., fascinate the
infant? Not because of experience, surely, because it has no
past experience to bank on. If we would find the explanation
for such interest, we must go back to biological structure and
conative dispositions, not to psychological association. We
sum it up by saying that the child and the chicken are so con-
stituted as to feel this way in the presence of such stimuli.
Evidently experience leans upon what is not experience, as
regards primary interest.

If you take into account the more general demands or postu-
lates that underlie psychological activities, they, too, seem to
carry us beyond experience. Why is consistency pleasing and
contradiction disagreeable to the cultured man? Why do
certain forms and combinations of colors and of sounds stimu-
late him to appreciation and excite the feeling for the beautiful ?
Why do certain things provoke disgust and other things ap-
proval? Partly, no doubt, on account of experience; but if
certain instinctive qualifications were lacking, or if the instinc-
tive constitution were different, the same situations might

18 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

produce entirely opposite feelings on the part of individual
experience. In order to understand the learning process, we
must take account, not merely of experience, but of capacity.
No facilities for education can overcome the native limitations
of the imbecile. And capacity cannot, so far as we can see,
be reduced to experience. Imbeciles sometimes come from
highly cultured ancestry, and geniuses from a background of
ignorant but honest peasants.

Not only is the woof of experience-in-the-making thus con-
ditioned by an instinctive warp which experience presupposes,
but culture and meaning, the net result of experience and
tendency, are funded in a way which, to a large extent at least,
is unavailable as experience. Physiological and conative
tendencies come to do the work of memory. It is precious
little that a man out of college twenty years, and engaged in
new pursuits, can recall of his college curriculum. And yet
he feels differently and acts differently because of his college
course. Here, again, in the very definition of culture, we
come upon a subtle relation to reality which is not experience.
The ego, therefore, whatever else it may be, is not merely a
"bundle of perceptions" or of any other conscious states.
They are not the whole story, at least.

Another road might have been chosen to show the insufficiency
of experience as an account of reality. If we take the imme-
diatist point of view, what reality can we accord to nature?
Is nature merely a " bundle of perceptions ? " We have already
found such an account inadequate to the ego ; on closer scru-
tiny we shall find it equally inadequate to account for nature.
If we insist that the objects of nature are statable merely as
our perceptions, we must be prepared to answer several ques-
tions. Does reality consist merely in the perceptual differences
that things do make, or does it also include the differences which
they can or will make under other conditions than the present ?
If we admit will and can, have we not implied a larger con-
stitution than experience? And, then, what about the con-
stancies or uniformities in our perceptions, upon which all our
expectancies or scientific laws are based? Is the recurrence
of perceptions in different moments of the temporal stream,
itself brought about by perception ? Is it part of perception

BEING — MATTER AND THE ABSOLUTE 19

that perceptions shall repeat themselves in certain describable
and definite ways? But if perceptions do not exist in the
meantime, it is hard to see how this repetition can be a char-
acter of the perceptions. If esse is perdpi, it is hard to see
what reality there can be when there is no perdpi. In the
prediction of an eclipse a thousand years from now, or the
reading of an eclipse a thousand years ago, there surely is no
present perception of the fact ; and absent perception is hardly
perception. If there can be such a thing, then, as future
perceptions or the reading off of past perceptions, experience
must lean upon a non-experiential constitution.

This is not the whole difficulty of the phenomenalistic theory
of nature. A further problem confronts us. Can an individual,
whether conscious or unconscious, be resolved into external
relations? Can reality be regarded as having merely an out-
side and no inside? By thus regarding it we shall, indeed,
avoid the knotty problem of the "thing itself"; but is our
account of reality fair and complete? Is reality merely what
it does, in the sense of external continuities, waiving for the
time being the difficulty of what it may do? In the case of
one sort of individual at least, namely the purposive ego, we
must admit that he is not merely what he does, not merely
the perceptions he produces in us; but he is also something
on his own account, a center of at least possible appreciation
and willing. This is the real core of the ego for our practical
social relations, not the external and adventitious ways of tak-
ing him — not his side-by-sideness or likeness to other in-
dividuals, not the sensations of the sight-touch-motor complex.
The latter for the deeper purposes of our personal relations
are merely signs — the clothes, or part of them; and a self
consisting merely of clothes would be a funny sort of an in-
dividual. The ego, to use a good Hegelian distinction, must
be something fur sich and not merely an sich, a meaning and
value on its own account as well as something for others. If
only purposive beings have an inside, is the baby merely an
outside, merely clothes? It seems to have a core of feelings
of its own, however crude. It is an object of will and apprecia-
tion, of hope and love. And what about animals? Are they
merely our perceptual outside with no inside? No, they, too,

20 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

seem to have a core of appetite and feeling which we must
acknowledge. And while we know little about the inner life
of the simpler forms of nature, at least they are not merely
fictions of ours. Our agreements about them are forced agree-
ments ; they are not created by convention ; and we must learn
to adjust ourselves to these simpler realities in order to control
them and to realize our purposes. If we would keep dry in
the rain storm we must bring our umbrella and wraps along.
While the physical object can to a degree be sensed, while it
can even for certain purposes be stated as more or less "per-
manent possibilities of sensation," its existence is not constituted
by our sensations. Approaching the problem as we must from
the point of view of our active purposes, we cannot resolve
reality, whether conscious or unconscious, into bundles of per-
ception, or into experience of any form, altogether. We must
interpolate, somehow, realities which are not immediate ex-
perience.

Two Hypotheses

How shall we conceive this larger constitution? Two im-
portant hypotheses have become classical, one that of inde-
pendent and immutable substances, and the other that of the
absolute. First, a word as regards the hypothesis of sub-
stances. The realistic substances may be material or spiritual ;
they may be the extended, impenetrable atoms of Democritus
or the Leibnizian monads — non-extended, windowless soul-
points, representing in an ascending scale of clearness, the
entire universe. It is quite wrong, then, to accuse the older
realism of being materialistic. On the other hand, the sub-
stances which have counted in science have, until recent times,
at least, been of the extended or material order. The monads
of Leibniz and the qualities of Herbart have not counted in the
development of science, interesting though they have been as
metaphysical curiosities. The atomic theory of Democritus,
adopted by modern chemistry and made exact through Ber-
zelius's conception of weight proportions, has, on account of
its convenience for scientific description, come to stand as our
ideal of atomic realism.

In the older conception of atomic realism, the geometric

BEING — MATTER AND THE ABSOLUTE 21

properties, depending upon extension, are the important ones ;
even after the idea of energy, in the sense of doing work, be-
came a permanent concept in physical science, the concept of
extension was long allowed to rank with the concept of energy.
This gives rise to Herbert Spencer's antinomy as regards
extension and force. This antinomy, however, is losing much
of its relevancy by the fact that extension is relegated to a
secondary place in the scientific conception of physical nature.

Some philosophers and psychologists maintained long ago
that extension is a "confused idea" and has no reality outside
of individual experience. Berkeley pointed out, with his
psychological keenness, that the size of a thing varies with the
distance and that the form varies with the angle of perspective.
He concluded, therefore, that matter, being thus relative,
could not be objectively real. Modern psychology, with less
of metaphysical interest, but with superior experimental tools,
has likewise pointed out the relative character of extension.
Thus it is shown that the extension seems longer when the
intervening space is filled than when it is empty, whether you
take tactual extension or visual extension. Where the area
is too small for two points to be discriminated as two, they
still furnish the sensation of a bigger point than either of the
points separately applied. When a given number of points are
made to stimulate the skin cells or the retinal cells successively,
the extension seems larger than if the stimulation is simul-
taneous. Even as regards sound, we find an interesting rela-
tion between the rate of succession of physical stimuli and the
sense of volume. Sounds succeeding each other, approximating
the rate of 5^5- of a second cannot be discriminated as distinct
sounds. We cannot here distinguish even between the dura-
tion of the successive and the simultaneous, but the successive
feel bigger than the simultaneous.1 Not only the velocity of
certain electric currents, therefore, but a certain velocity of
nerve currents produces an apparent mass.

Modern physical science, however, has been quite untouched
by psychological investigation. What physical science has
been concerned with has not been perceptual extension with
varying conditions, but an artificial unit of extension under

i See Chapter XIV, p. 260.

22 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

standard conditions, as, for example, the steel yard kept at a
certain temperature, and other uniform conditions, in the
British Museum. As long as this conventional unit could be
applied under definite conditions, extension still maintained
its hold as an ultimate attribute of physical reality. I say
physical reality because the field of investigation, where ex-
tensive units have been applied, has been narrowed down to
this. Philosophy since Descartes has recognized that there
is no sense in speaking of an extended will. Even in physical
science, however, serious doubts have arisen, though on ex-
perimental and not a priori grounds, as regards the absolute
character of extension and even of weight. What has given
rise to this doubt in recent science is the demonstration that
neither extension nor weight can be regarded as an absolute
constant, and that, therefore, recourse must be had, for descrip-
tive purposes, to a more ultimate concept. It has been shown
by Lorentz that even mechanical mass in motion must vary
with the electrodynamic field, and so is not constant. Gravi-
tational mass, moreover, does not seem to apply with equal
force to all energy ; there seems to be little relevancy in speak-
ing of electricity as having gravitational mass.1

Recent investigations into the nature of electricity have
shown that mass can actually be produced through velocity.
Kaufmann, J. J. Thomson, and others have demonstrated
"that if the velocity of a charged body is comparable with
that of light, the mass of the body will increase with the veloc-
ity." 2 And not only that, but the experiments and calcula-
tions according to Thomson, "support the view that the whole
mass of these electrified particles arises from their charge." 3

1 See "Electricity," by Gisbert Kapp, pp. 10 and 11.

1 J. J. Thomson, "Electricity and Matter," p. 34.

1 It is only fair to say that Thomson in more recent publications has modified
his view. As I understand it, he does not now regard it proved that the sum of
the apparent masses of the negative charges equals the total mass of the atom.
There is a residuum of gravitational mass which must be accounted for in other
ways. This is now a matter of controversy. But in any case the Cartesian
idea of atoms as rigid, mathematical figures has been exploded. Both the shape
and the magnitude of the atom vary with the velocity and the magnetic field.
They can be changed by pressure. Energy, not mass, becomes, therefore,
the primary physical reality. The atom, Thomson has shown, can be stated
as the sum of its internal energy and the energy of translation.

BEING — MATTER AND THE ABSOLUTE 23

A number of brilliant physicists, including Rutherford, Strutt,
etc., take the view that the atom can be resolved into negative
electric charges held together by positive electricity spread
over a wider volume. The conclusion of these investigations
would seem to be that there is "no mass other than electro-
dynamic inertia. But in this case, the mass can no longer be
constant ; it augments with the velocity and it depends on the
direction, and a body maintained by a notable velocity will
not oppose the same inertia to the forces which tend to deflect
it from its route as to those which tend to accelerate or to
retard its progress." *

The new investigations, so far from disproving the descrip-
tive significance of the atom as it has figured in physical science,
have on the contrary furnished experimental corroboration of
its existence and character. Whether the hypothesis of posi-
tive electricity proves to be more than speculative, it remains
significant that the mass of the atom as now measured coin-
cides with the mass of the hydrogen atom, and this would seem
to furnish additional evidence for the hydrogen atom as the
atomic unit. There is little in common, however, between
this present atomism of the electrical school and the old specu-
lative atomism. In the new atomism, energy has become the
chief interest rather than extension or weight, and it has been
confidently asserted that these can be reduced to motion and
distance. The atom is no longer regarded as eternal, impene-
trable, and indifferent, but as the storehouse of pent-up energy
of enormous quantity, though, as in the case of radium, it
may be in a very unstable equilibrium. Instead of impene-
trable, inert bits, we have now to deal with electrical charges
of a positive and negative kind, although it may still be conven-
ient to speak in terms of particles or corpuscles as vehicles of
charges. Instead of the mythological "bonds" of an older
chemistry, we have the relation of positive and negative charges
to each other. Atomic relations are explained by the fact
that atoms can, under certain conditions, receive or expel

1 H. Poincarg, "The Value of Science," Popular Science Monthly, Vol. LXX,
p. 349. For the electrical theory of matter see the lucid exposition by Hon.
R. J. Strutt, in his work entitled " The Becquerel Rays and <the Properties
of Radium," especially pp. 184-193.

24 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

particles, in the former case increasing their negative, in the
latter their positive, charge. By the conception of this elec-
trical atom and its simpler elements, the electrons, which bear
very much the same relation as regards distance that inter-
stellar masses bear to each other, the electrical school strives
to find a common denominator which, through the stability
or instability of the structure, can account for the scale of
physical changes from the ordinary chemical elements to the
strange behavior of radium. And it has even been suggested
that nerve energy and mental energy are "inductive" relations
and can be reduced to electrical phenomena. Thus this school
feels that at last the old dream of one ultimate Urstoff has been
attained. We have, instead of the old material pluralism of
the atoms of Democritus, with their dependence upon me-
chanical contact, a new energetic pluralism which is capable
of constituting its own continuum over intervening distances
by means of energetic charges, whether within or outside the
gross atom of chemistry.

Possibly the seventy or eighty elements of modern chemistry
may be simplified by means of such a theory, but of such a
simplification, we have only hints at present. The recurrent
similarity in the geometrical groupings which free magnets
spontaneously assume in an electromagnetic field when you
increase their number, as shown by Mayer's experiments, fur-
nishes a direct analogy to the periodic law of the chemical
elements and to the recurrent characteristics of these elements
as shown by spectral analysis. The positive or negative
chargeability of various elements shows at least an intimate
connection between them and electrical energy. This theory
tries with wonderful plausibility to account alike for the stability
of the ordinary chemical elements and the instability of the
radio-active substances; but its most interesting aspect to
us is that, like the earlier metaphysical theories of Leibniz and
Boscovich, it reduces mass to energetic terms. Thus in mod-
ern physical science we have passed from the Cartesian con-
ceptual model of rigid geometrical figures enclosing extension,
to one where extension is regarded as a function of energy.

While it is clear that the concept of matter must henceforth
occupy a secondary place to that of energy, it would be a mis-

BEING — MATTER AND THE ABSOLUTE 25

take to suppose that the concept of matter has lost its useful-
ness for scientific and practical prediction. On the contrary
it has come to have more definite meaning. What has been
established is that matter must be explained in terms of energy
rather than energy in terms of the interactions of inert matter.
Matter is an ensemble of properties within certain energy
systems, as taken account of by our sight-touch-motor per-
ceptions. It does not, however, depend for its existence upon
our perception. The action of gravity fortunately is the same
whether we attend to it or not. So are the size, density, and
other properties of things. While, furthermore, the properties
of matter such as extension, elasticity, impenetrability, chemical
affinity, weight, etc., must be regarded as relative to energy
systems, they are none the less real and predictable, once we
define our energy system. The empirical generalizations of
physics and chemistry, based as they are upon observed prop-
erties, cannot be disturbed by revolutions in scientific theory.
The laws of mechanics are being applied in the new fields of
investigation. Electrons act inversely as the square of the
distance, according to the parallelogram of forces, etc., even
though it seems that particles at rest repel each other, and
particles moving side by side attract. While the electrical
theory has tried to account for the gravitation mass of the
atom by assuming a sphere of positive electricity, round which
the negative electrons revolve, no evidence exists as yet for
positive electricity. All we can say is that positive electricity
is the property of the atom when negatively charged particles
are emitted. And if it were proved to exist as an entity, it
would in no wise affect the material properties, as already
known, of the energy system which we call the atom. Whether
the properties we associate as matter exist in all energy systems
can only be determined by scientific experience. We can make
no a priori analytic judgments as to their presence. But
even if they don't, that does not invalidate their presence and
validity within energy systems where they are known to exist.
What we must not forget is that matter is a pragmatic con-
cept, and the ensemble of properties which constitute matter,
pragmatic properties. They must be taken for what they
are known-as in specific energy systems. Extension is, for

26 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

many practical purposes, an important quality of our material
world. It is presupposed in our units of space measurement.
If we buy a suit of clothes, we want the right dimensions. If
we acquire a piece of land, we want the right acreage. That
extension is not a property in the abstract, but the qualification
of an energy system, depending so far as our perception of it
is concerned, upon the number of processes, peripheral and
central, which are stimulated ; that it varies with motion and
pressure, etc., does not make it any less real within the condi-
tions defined by experience. Elasticity on any theory of matter
still remains, for our senses and physical instruments, a property
by means of which we can distinguish some bodies which tend
to resume their former state when strain is released, from
bodies which do not possess this characteristic, and deal with
them accordingly. Solidity is still the inertia opposed to the
pressure of active touch or other pressures. In ordinary ex-
perience it is relative, to be sure. But a bar of steel at low
temperature is practically solid. When it still yields to enor-
mous pressure, as Professor Richards has shown, this doubtless
indicates the overcoming of the inertia of the atomic structure.
But there would seem to be a definite limit, whether reached
or not, where bodies are incompressible. Chemical affinity
still remains a tendency to selective behavior among some
chemical processes under certain conditions of temperature,
electrolysis, etc. The property of weight which, with its im-
plication of other properties such as extension, may be said to
be the pragmatic equivalent of matter, remains fundamental
for certain purposes on any theory.

In each case of these and other properties, the property must
be taken as relative to its energy context and as varying with
this. Take weight for example. This is clearly a property
depending upon an energetic system, little though we know about
its structure. Weight is dependent upon a relation of masses
and varies inversely as the square of their distance. It is a
constant, for practical purposes, at a given point on the earth's
surface since the mass of the earth increases but slowly. The
weight of a body, under ordinary conditions of motion, con-
stitutes its inertia, and when we speak of the conservation of
matter, we mean the conservation of weight. In the words

BEING — MATTER AND THE ABSOLUTE 27

of Simon Newcomb : " The weight of a body at a given place is
equally a measure of its mass, and the only measure that can
readily be applied in practice. Experiment shows the result
of the two measures to be identical, since weight, or gravity,
and inertia have the same ratio for all substances. All bodies
retain their mass unchanged, whatever transmutations they
may undergo." * But the constancy of inertia or mass is in
turn relative to an energetic system. In the case of particles,
moving with a velocity approximating light, there is a sudden
increase of mass due to motion, beside the original mass of the
particles. But whether we are dealing with inertia as gravita-
tion mass or as due to velocity, in any case inertia is an energy
category and eliminating inertia means the withdrawal of
energy from a given part of space. What has been abolished
by modern science is not matter as characteristic of certain
energy systems. This remains a valuable instrument of pre-
diction. What has been banished is "inert matter" as a meta-
physical entity.

The weakness in the old metaphysical doctrine of realistic
substances is that, inasmuch as these substances are independent
and indifferent to the various combinations in which they
enter, they cannot account for the apparent processes. The
rigid material atoms become as useless to account for the
physical changes as the soul substances become superfluous in
accounting for the stream of conscious processes. The sub-
stances, in other words, must be known through their activity ;
and, therefore, energy, and not substance, becomes the funda-
mental thing; substances so-called are mere abstractions of
the relative uniformities and constancies, physical and psycho-
logical, which we observe in the stream of processes.

The other classic hypothesis which tries to furnish a setting
for our finite experience, to account for its coming and going
and its relativity, is that of absolute idealism. The origin of
this theory is easy enough to trace. It grew out of the Kan-
tian doctrine of the unity of apperception. This doctrine
merely emphasizes that, in order to be known, the facts must
be taken into the system of experience with its laws, and that

1 Article on " Matter," Baldwin's Dictionary of Philosophy and, Psychology.

28 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

consequently the world is coherent for us if we are sane. Kant,
however, added the gratuitous assumption that the categories
of our mind are extraneous to reality and that, therefore, reality
cannot be as we know it. We know it as a dynamic world
where the properties and laws which pertain to the specific
activity system must be empirically ascertained. Kant real-
ized this, but imbued as he was with the old metaphysics of
inert substances, he insisted, consistently enough, that we
could not possibly know things as they are in themselves.
This would evidently have to be by some passive intuition
which should not involve the interaction between organism
and stimulus. Kant's common sense led him to insist, how-
ever, that we should not waste any time over things in them-
selves, and that for practical purposes, we are no worse off
for our ignorance of them, since we are concerned only with the
dynamic world as it appears in our experience. And nobody
could quarrel with that.

The successors of Kant accepted his thesis that reality is
only accessible as it figures within our cognitive system with
its laws, and that reality for us is unified in being taken up into
our apperceptive system with its postulates. They made,
however, two important amendments. One is a legitimate
one, and implied in common sense, viz. that we must assume
that reality is what it is known-as, or as Hegel would express
it, that it is the essence which appears. They thus banished
the fictitious thing-in-itself. The other assumption, which
the epistemological idealists have added, is illegitimate and
rests on an ambiguity of language. It amounts to saying that 4
because reality can only be known as experienced, therefore it
can only exist as experience. This had been expressed before
Kant in the formula of Berkeley : Esse est perdpi, or to be real
is to be perceived. But for the post-Kantian idealists it sig-
nifies somewhat more than that. It means that to be real is
to be apperceived or interpreted. Since, moreover, this inter-
pretation, from Kant down, is recognized to be social, and not
merely individual, the hypothesis comes to mean that to be
real is to exist within the unity of social interpretation.1 Since

1 The social aspect has been emphasized by Royce in " The Problem of
Christianity," Vol. II.

BEING — MATTER AND THE ABSOLUTE 29

this, too, however, is relative, — has a finite beginning and end
in time, is subject to error, etc., — to be real must mean to
exist within an absolute system of experience. Thus the
unity of apperception is converted into a cosmic unity. The
emphasis as to the character of this system has varied with the
temperament of its advocates. Sometimes it is the logical
character that is emphasized, as with Hegel; sometimes it
is the ethical, as with Fichte ; sometimes the aesthetic as with
Schiller, but in any case the assumption is implied that to
be real is to be part of a system of conscious experience.

Now, there can be no doubt that the contribution of absolute
idealism is historically important. It is one of those compensa-
tory movements by which history strives to correct itself. The
tendency has been to emphasize too much the material systems
of reality, and to regard the mental systems as incidental. The
latter must be recognized to be at least as real as the former.
Moreover, it is true that the values of our world can only exist
within mental systems. The supreme interest of man, there-
fore, should be man, the interpretation of his ideals and in-
stitutions. It was a sound instinct, too, that insisted that the
world without, — the larger world of which our conscious
moments are transient phases, — can be no less reasonable
than the world within, and that the universe, somehow, must
respect our higher instincts as it respects our lower. The faith
that the laws of thought are the laws of things is at least an
implicit postulate of all science. Else the thought function
wdfcfcl beas futile as it would be anomalous. And we may
assiuanj ^L the universe has an equal respect for other funda-
mental raiB^f human nature. When, moreover, we approach
the universe^ ttk wholeness, we may regard our later ideal
systems as a more adequate key to reality than the simpler
material systems.

But this does not prove that the simpler systems are not real.
Nor does it prove that reality cannot exist except within our
apperception systems, be they individual or social, be they
perceptual, logical, ethical, or aesthetic. Certainly so far as
our experience is concerned, we must recognize systems which
so exist. And while they must overlap our mental systems to
be significant, it is equally true that our mental systems show

30 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

numerous dependencies upon them in the economy of the life
process. While, again, values are dependent upon mental
systems, or the various conscious types of selection of our
socialized individuals, other qualities and relations need not
be affected by being taken account of. We discover the ratio
of gravitational relations ; we do not make the fact itself. Nor
is it clear that the universe as a whole must be a system of
conscious experience. Conscious experience may well be a
characteristic of our peculiar type of interaction with reality
— real indeed under its own conditions, but not necessarily
applicable to reality in its wholeness. The latter may have
no use for sensations or images or words, and yet may be in-
finitely wiser than our cogitations. The absolute of the epis-
temological idealists is after all an anthropomorphic projection.
"So the Ethiopians make their gods black and snub-nosed ; the
Thracians give theirs red hair and blue eyes." l And while
the absolute is more of an abstraction, it is still human nature
with its limitations writ large. This comes out with somewhat
bizarre humor in the assumption by each absolute idealist that,
in unraveling his own mental processes with their idiosyncra-
sies, he is unraveling the absolute. This is not apt to increase
our respect for the absolute, but we may entertain our doubts.
As an ideal of knowledge, we do indeed aim at complete
unification of the facts of our world. Even if reality in its
wholeness cannot be shown to be a reflective unity of experience,
the dream of science must be to weave together our human
facts and interests into such a system. Absolute idealism has
served to stimulate interest in the logical implications of ex-
perience. It also fulfills a religious function in some lives
where the aesthetic and intellectual cravings are more prominent
than the ethical and practical. But for purposes of explana-
tion, the hypothesis of an ontological absolute is useless. It
is not at all clear how an eternal and complete system of ex-
perience can account in any way for the coming and going of
our perceptions, the tragedies and successes of our empirical
world. The absolute as an hypothesis fails as completely,
and for the same reason, as the old realistic substances in
meeting the world of process. It is barren so far as helping
1 Xenophanes, fr. 6a, Burnet's translation.

BEING — MATTER AND THE ABSOLUTE 31

us to make any predictions in our changing world ; an entity,
which is supposed to explain everything beforehand, explains
nothing. We must go to work, therefore, independently of
such an hypothesis, aesthetically satisfying as it may be to
some, to meet the problems of our finite world of change.

Moreover, as Plato long ago pointed out in the " Parmenides,"
not only could not such a system meet the problems of change,
but the absolute could not know our finite world, nor could we
know it. That we could not know it must seem apparent
enough, for if we knew what an absolute experience is, we should
already possess such an experience, as, indeed, the absolute
idealists have not been too modest to claim ; but, even in that
case, we, after all, know only what we know. The absolute
itself becomes merely our construction — our attempt to inter-
pret our finite experience. We have failed to reach the per-
manent and eternal for which the absolute was supposed to
stand. We know no absolute locus in the world of experience.
Our absolutes must vary with the growing insight of the in-
dividual and the race, with the evolutionary process of human
experience. The historic relativity of the idealistic theories
would seem to indicate that, in spite of the confidence of such
men as Hegel, they had no first-hand acquaintance with the
absolute — not even a wink or tip. If we cannot know the
absolute, neither can the absolute know us. It could not
know our ignorance, our failures, and our despairs as the
tragic facts they are for us. We exist, not merely in logical
contexts, but in contexts of emotion and action and must be
known in such contexts. The very fragmentariness of our
human experiences from the absolute point of view would
convert our despairs into hopes, our tragedies into comedies,
and our failures into successes. Such an absolute, then, even
if it existed, could not account for the world of change, with
its adjustments and maladjustments and its different levels
of appreciation. Like the realistic substances, it is an hyposta-
tization and possesses all the relativity that the unity of finite
human experience, which created it, must possess. That
which explains process must manifest itself in the process.
The meaning we can snatch from the flux of things possesses,
indeed, a certain eternity while it lasts. It aids us to prepare

32 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

for the future. It is prophetic of the larger insight and the
larger experience to come. But as for absolute permanence,
we know this even less in the field of human experience than
in the case of chemical elements. The old static view of being,
therefore, has given place to the view of dynamic processes,
whether as regards the atoms of the physical sciences or the
images and concepts of psychology. Being = energy.

We have tried, so far, two ways of supplementing our momen-
tary individual experiences so as to make social expectancy
possible. One way is that of independent substances and the
other that of the idealistic absolute. Both roads have led to
the same goal, the recognition of process as an ultimate fact.
We have seen that "everlasting fixtures," to use Plato's phrase,
cannot account for our world. A thing must be known through
what it does or can do ; it must be defined through its dynamic
relations. Elastic balls, geometrical figures, and other con-
ceptual entities must be regarded as, at most, convenient ab-
stractions from the ever-restless processes. Although this
has been recognized by philosophers in various ways, it is to
the practical working necessities of science from Galileo down
that we owe our present formulation of energy.

CHAPTER III

PRAGMATIC ENERGISM
The Nature of Energy

THROUGH a chronic tendency of the human mind, due to
the stereotyping effect of language, philosophers have sought
for energy as a thing-in-itself. It has long been maintained
that we can know only the effects of energy, and the conclusion
has been drawn that energy itself is inscrutable and unknow-
able. If effects or changes are merely external relations, they
will indeed show us nothing about things. But it must be
clear that such an agnosticism is of our own making. Since
the fundamental characteristic of energy is activity, it would
seem that the saner attitude is that of common sense and science,
both of which estimate energy by what it does. What we
know about our world in our experience is meager enough, but
we have at least a right to assume that our fragmentary evi-
dence is real so far as it goes. And if energy reveals itself
in certain physical and psychological changes, these, we must
assume, indicate the nature of energy. We must hold to the
pragmatic postulate that pn^rpy is wfraj; it. does. Any other
assumption is suicidal at the outset.

Others have insisted that we have immediate and intuitive
evidence of the nature of energy in our sensations of strain,
our feeling of effort. Now this is true, no doubt, to the extent
that, if we were not ourselves active beings, we should not be
conscious of energy in nature. CThe fact is that we should not
be conscious at all.) Psychological analysis shows that the
feeling of effort consists in certain kinaesthetic sensations —
sensations of muscular tension about the forehead and in the
throat, of labored breathing, etc., when we are baffled by a
problem. But these sensations are not mental activity. They

33

34 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

are reflexes merely, — symptoms of a somewhat unorganized
or obstructed stage of activity. They are not concomitant
to all our activity. When the particular activity becomes
organized and proceeds fluently and easily, the sensations of
strain disappear. But the activity does not disappear; on
the contrary it is now most efficient.

Science has followed the pragmatic method and insisted that
energy must be known by work done and the sort of work that
is done. It is true that in the minds of scientists there have
lingered reminiscences of an antiquated metaphysics, of an
energy-in-itself, of occult "forces," and "latent" energy. But
such misconceptions have had no effect on the empirical results
of science. These have to do with predictions of behavior
under definite conditions. And by behavior science does not
mean merely a sequence of perceptions. The assumption
that these constitute the whole story is a metaphysical inter-
pretation of science. Of course we must know reality through
our perceptions, i.e. we must become aware of its changes.
But science does not assume, as phenomenalism does, either
that we are dealing only with perceptions or that our per-
ceptions of things are "faked" manifestations of an energy
in itself. Our perceptual system may inform us of what
energy does in systems outside of the cognitive relation: Our
seeing the gunpowder, and the spark applied to it, and the
explosion with its results, informs us of what is happening in
our environment. It is not our perception of the explosion
which makes the explosion occur ; the work done by the energies
involved must be taken account of in their own context. In
other words, science is dealing with real activities, as revealed
in various contexts, including our perceptual context. Whether
again we measure energy in foot pounds, the work necessary
to lift a pound a foot in a second, or in dynes, the work nec-
essary to lift a gram one centimeter in a second, is of course
purely a matter of practical convenience, and has no philo-
sophic interest.

Work and inertia are merely two different points of view,
due to the special interest for the time being. In speaking
of work we emphasize the going on of activity in connection
with a series or direction which we have selected. In speaking

PRAGMATIC ENERGISM 35

of inertia or mass, we emphasize energy which must be balanced,
overcome, or withdrawn. To start a body moving we must
overcome its inertia or its energy of position. Again, we can-
not annihilate the energy of a moving body.* According to
Newton's first law, if a certain initial energy is communicated
to a body from a definite base, it will move uniformly in a
straight line unless interfered with by other energies. Here
energy must be withdrawn or transformed in order for the
body to stop moving. To eliminate interference, again, means
the withdrawal of energy. In our practical social relations,
we use inertia in a similar sense : it means energy which must
be overcome or withdrawn. We must overcome people's
opposition, scruples, or habits. We may be reformers trying
to overcome people's prejudices, or we may be confidence men
trying to withdraw people's caution. Work and inertia are
pragmatic distinctions depending on our special interests in
dealing with our world. They hold for all energies, whether
it be material masses in space, or electric currents, or social
interactions. We can see, then, that inertia is a universal
characteristic of energy.

The simplest unit of reality is an energy system. Things
do not have properties in themselves; they possess properties
only within a system, and such properties vary with the condi-
tions which determine the system. That properties exist in
the abstract is one of the last superstitions of the old metaphys-
ics. Take weight, for example, the most important property
of mechanical science. Does weight exist in things by them-
selves ? We know that the weight of a body varies at different
points of the surface of the earth. It is a function, though we
do not know how, of the attraction of the earth. According
to Newton's law, bodies attract each other in proportion to the
mass, and inversely as the square of the distance. For very
large distances, we know now that gravitation becomes negli-
gible ; and of course for infinite distance it becomes zero. A
body at an infinite distance from other bodies would have no
weight, which amounts practically to the same as saying that
bodies by themselves would have no weight. If you say that
such bodies have potential weight, that is the same as saying
that they do have weight when they exist in connection with

36 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

a certain finite system. The same could be shown for other
qualities. Extension is a property things have for us in a
certain perceptual energy system. This implies, beside certain
external energies, a certain stimulation of the cells of our end-
organs, and of our cerebrum. The number of physiological
processes stimulated seems an important condition, though the
sequence of stimulations must also be taken into account. In
any case, extension as perceived is real only in an energy sys-
tem, and varies with this. And the same is true of the exten-
sion of things with reference to each other. It varies with
motion, temperature, and pressure. In so far as we apply size
and weight to corpuscles moving with the velocity of light,
both properties depend largely, if not altogether, on motion.
Properties have no meaning for science, except as energy deter-
minations, characteristics within energy systems. And this is
as true for what we have been accustomed to call primary
qualities as for the so-called secondary qualities. Science
knows nothing about absolute properties.

The concept of energy as a universal generalization is a thin
concept. But any predicate of the whole of reality must be
thin. How convenient it would be if we could condense real-
ity altogether into one formula, requiring no supplementary
definitions, — matter, spirit, electricity, anything that could
be substituted for the pluralistic variety of our world. But
leaving a priori and sentimental preferences out, we must find
what experience warrants us in saying in general about this
variety. And the predicate of energy is at least more fruitful
than the medieval, lexicographical predicate of being. It-
furnishes a methodological postulate without which science is
impossible, and a program which can be filled out by scientific
research. This methodological advantage of the concept of
energy is stated clearly in Professor More's summary of Ran-
kine, the founder of the science of energetics : " Instead of
supposing the various physical phenomena to be constituted,
in an occult way, of modifications of motion and force, he at-
tempts to frame laws which shall embrace the properties
common to any one class. He finds energy, or the capacity to
effect changes, to be the common characteristic of the various
states of matter to which the several branches of physics

PRAGMATIC ENERGISM 37

relate. If we then frame general laws regarding energy, we
shall be able to apply them with appropriate changes to every
branch of physics. In all cases we have a certain quantity of
energy active in a definite manner. Our aim should be to
find by experiment the properties of any such manifestation,
and to combine all common properties by general mathematical
laws." l This principle of Rankine can be extended, we be-
lieve, to the whole field of reality, including organic and psychic
changes, however difficult it may be in the latter cases to formu-
late our results in exact mathematical terms. Wherever you
have knowable entities, whatever their stuff may be, there you
must have equivalencies in the way of predictable differences.
Only in so far are they knowable. We must know reality by
the differences which it makes to our practical conduct.

The Postulates of Energy Systems

Our energy systems are cross sections of reality in the service
of our special purposes. They are pragmatic, but that does not
mean that they are unreal. They are real just insofar as they
are based upon genuine characteristics. In analyzing any such
system there are certain general postulates holding for all
systems : there must be certain variables, there must be the
form or organizing relation of the system, and there must be
recurrence. Recurrence is the pragmatic equivalent of what
an older metaphysics spoke of as substance. We must now
try to illustrate the working of these postulates in some typical
energy systems.

In a mechanical system, such as that of ordinary kinetic
energy, we have three independent variables : gravitation mass,
space units, and temporal units. For purposes of social
description, these variables must be standardized. We ascer-
tain the gravitation mass at a certain location on the earth's
surface, Paris for example. We standardize our space units
in terms of some common measure, kept at a certain constant
temperature, whether it be the steel yard in London or the
meter in Paris. We standardize our temporal units in terms of
sidereal time, and our clocks are so regulated. These units

1 Hibbert Journal, July, 1909, p. 785. The views of Rankine are to be found
in a memoir read before the Philosophical Society of Glasgow in 1855.

1388SO

38 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

are constant for practical purposes, but they are at best prag-
matic measures. The mass of the earth, sidereal time, and our
conventional space measures are all undergoing variations,
but so long as they serve our common purposes, we can ignore
such variations. If all bodies in space varied correspondingly,
owing to motion or electromagnetic action, we should not be
able to detect it. But since the quantities measured and the1
measure would vary together, we should not be practically
affected by this universal relativity. Furthermore, our simple
mechanical system has form. It is uniquely determined by
the three factors mentioned, viz. gravitation, space, and time
units. It is statable in terms of a simple formula : \ MV2,
where M stands for mass, and V for velocity. And, finally,
while we live in a world of constant flux, and try to steer our
behavior in such a flux, the system in question repeats itself in
such a way that we can use the same formula again and again
under the stated conditions.

In a more complex material system, such as a chemical system,
we can analyze the system into the same elementary postulates.
If we wish to explain the compound, water, for example, we
must take account of the variables — the properties of hydro-
gen and oxygen, and of temperature. We state the organizing
relation as H2O, the combining proportion of hydrogen and
oxygen. And once we have standardized the factors, we are
able to repeat the formula so long as the conditions on our
earth remain fairly uniform, i.e. for all practical purposes.

In analyzing electrical systems, we do not seem to be able
to use gravitation mass as one of our variables. It seems to
be empirically true that charging a metal bar with any amount
of electricity does not alter its weight. But science has found
other variables no less clear and definite. We know electrical
energy, as we do mechanical, by the work it does. "The
presence of an electric current is recognized by three qualities or
powers : (1) by the production of a magnetic field, (2) in the
case of conduction currents, by the production of heat in the
conductor, and (3) if the conductor is an electrolyte and the
current unidirectional, by the occurrence of chemical decom-
position in it. An electric current may also be regarded as
the result of a movement of electricity across each section of

PRAGMATIC ENERGISM 39

the current, and is then measured by the quantity conveyed
per unit of time." 1

In electrical energy, as in mechanical, we are able to apply
our three postulates. We have certain variables, a certain
form which is mathematically statable, and we have recurrence.
"A current flows in a circuit by virtue of an electromotive force,
and the numerical relation between the current and the elec-
tromotive force is determined by three qualities of the circuit
called respectively, its resistance, inductance, and capacity." *
In the case of continuous, unidirectional conduction currents,
the resistance of the circuit is the only one of the above men-
tioned qualities of which we need to take account. The rela-
tion of electric motion to this is formulated as Ohm's law,
" which states that the numerical value of the current is ob-
tained as the quotient of the electromotive force by a certain
constant of the circuit called its resistance, which is a function
of the geometrical form of the circuit, of its nature, i.e. material,
and of its temperature, but is independent of the electromotive
force or current." 3 "We may otherwise define the resistance
of a circuit by saying that it is that physical quality of it in
virtue of which energy is dissipated as heat in the circuit when
energy flows through it." 4 When we deal with alternating
or periodic currents we have to take into account inductance
as well as resistance. Inductance "may be defined as that
quality in virtue of which energy is stored up in connection
with the circuit in a magnetic form. It can be experimentally
shown that a current cannot be created instantaneously in a
circuit by any finite electromotive force, and that when once
created, it cannot be annihilated instantaneously. The circuit
possesses a quality analogous to the inertia of matter. If a
current, i, is flowing in a circuit at any moment, the energy
stored in connection with the circuit is measured by \ Li2, where
L, the inductance of the current, is related to the current in the
same manner as the quantity called the mass of a body is re-
lated to the velocity in the expression for the ordinary kinetic
energy, viz. \ MV2. The rate at which this conserved energy

1 Article, "Electrokinetics," Encyclopaedia Britannica, llth ed., Vol. IX,
p. 211.

2 Ibid. p. 211. » Ibid. p. 211. < Ibid. p. 212.

40 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

varies with the current is called the ' electrokinetic momentum'
of this circuit ( = Li). Physically interpreted this quantity sig-
nifies the number of lines of magnetic flux due to the current itself
which are self-linked with its own circuit." 1 In electrical energy,
therefore, as in ordinary mechanical energy, we can define the
variables involved in its activity, we can state its organizing rela-
tion in terms of simple mathematical formulae, and we can predict
the future for practical purposes under the stated conditions.

If, again, we take an organic system, we find that we can deal
with this on the basis of the same postulates. Here too we
have our variables, our organizing relation, and recurrence.
Life, complex as it is, is after all, a chemical compound.
" Protoplasm, the living material, contains only a few elements,
all of which are extremely common, and none of which is pe-
culiar to it. These elements, however, form compounds char-
acteristic of living substance and for the most part peculiar
to it." Of such elements, the most significant is proteid, con-
sisting of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and sulphur.
Among other elements are such organic compounds as fats,
carbohydrates, and various inorganic substances such as salts
and water. "We attain, therefore, our first generalized de-
scription of life as the property, or peculiar quality of a sub-
stance composed of none but the more common elements, but
of these elements grouped in various ways to form compounds
ranging from proteid, the most complex of known substances,
to the simplest salts. The living substance, moreover, has
its mixture of elaborate and simple compounds associated in
a fashion that is peculiar. . . . Life is not a sum of the quali-
ties of the chemical elements contained in protoplasm, but a
function first of the peculiar architecture of the mixture, and
then of the higher complexity of the compounds contained in
the mixture. The qualities of water are no sum of the quali-
ties of hydrogen and oxygen, and still less can we expect to
explain the qualities of life without regard to the immense
complexity of the living substance." 2 It is true that the syn-

1 Article, "Electrokinetics," Encyclopaedia Britannica, llth ed., Vol. IX,
p. 212.

* The quotations are from Dr. P. C. Mitchell's article, "Life," in Encyclo-
paedia Britannica, llth ed.

PRAGMATIC ENERGISM 41

thetic chemist has not been able to account for the origin of
protoplasm by artificial manufacture from the known ingre-
dients, but this, he feels, is due to the fact that he has not yet
discovered the unique conditions of temperature, pressure, etc.
which were present at the geologic origin of life. In any case
his ignorance would not be helped by assuming another ele-
ment such as vital impulse. Vitalism seems to be laboring
under the confusion of trying to account for the unique organ-
izing relation as a discrete element in the compound, which
is like introducing a water impulse to account for the unique
properties of water.

What impresses us about such an energy system as life is
not so much the variables of composition, concentration,
temperature, etc., as the architecture or organization. What
baffles us when we try to characterize life is that the elementary
properties we may enumerate may be found singly in other
and simpler systems. Just as we cannot point out a unique
element in the composition of life, so it is difficult to point
out a unique property. Does living matter grow by intussus-
ception as opposed to superficial addition? So do inorganic
liquids, as when a soluble substance is added. Is living matter
irritable ? It is easy to find inorganic matter which is sensitive
to specific stimulation. The camera film is far more sensitive
than our eye; the resonator than the ear, etc. As regards
instability, if we use Spencer's formula that "life is the con-
tinuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations,"
we can parallel the readjustments in the case of life with those
of inorganic nature. In either case, the action of the stimulus
is complicated by the organization of the system and its poten-
tial energy. As regards mobility, so far as that is characteristic-''
of life, the Brownian movement is the very image of perpetual
mobility, and was first mistaken for a living compound. So we
might parallel simple reproduction by " the breaking up of a
drop of mercury into a number of droplets." Cumulative
disposition and differential action on the basis of it can be
paralleled in the inorganic world. Nor are discriminative
selection and reaction upon a type peculiarities of the organic
world. And, finally, the inorganic world acts in accordance with
the principles of logic and mathematics, even though it may

42 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

not be conscious of so doing. If you take the whole range
of organic action, therefore, you could doubtless parallel the
various properties and functions in the inorganic world. In
the large, too, the latter reveals such selective adaptation and
compensation in its moving equilibrium as would require an
"omniscient demon" to establish. The uniqueness of life lies
in the fact, long ago pointed out by Fechner, that life in its
evolution brings together and correlates, into one unique en-
semble, a vast array of properties, which are scattered in nature.
This ensemble has unique properties of its own, new ways of
storing potential energy, and new modes of behavior. No
theory of the origin of life or its relation to antecedent evolu-
tionary stages can affect the uniqueness of the system itself.
Nor must we regard its spontaneous or uncertain character,
for our limited powers of prediction, as a peculiar merit. For,
in the first place, this is due largely to our ignorance ; in the
second place, we value conduct because it is dependable as
well as because it is novel. We prefer people who are invari-
ably truthful, honest, just, and kind to those who are liable
to do anything whatsoever.

If we, finally, take up the most complex type of energetic
system with which we are familiar, viz. that of social inter-
actions, we must here too apply the same postulates. We
must discover the variables, the organizing relation, and the
type of recurrence which we can predicate. We can abstract,
for the purpose, from the material conditions, such as geographi-
cal configuration, temperature, water supply, character of the
soil, etc., as well as from the organic conditions which form
the background of the race, and deal with a social system as a
closed system, as we have done in the other types. We may
find analogies from the more elementary systems useful here.
Sir Joseph Larmor, in speaking of a material system, says :
"The amount of energy, defined in this sense by convertibility
with mechanical work, which is contained in a material system,
must be a function of its physical state and chemical consti-
tution and its temperature." l Translating these categories
into terms of society, we may say that the variables in a social
system are the group conditions in the way of greater or less

1 Article on "Energetics," Encyclopaedia Britannica, llth ed.

PRAGMATIC ENERGISM 43

condensation of numbers, the mental constitution of the factors
involved, and the common emotional excitement. Durkheim
has oversimplified the problem when he tries to account
for society hi terms of volume (or number) and density, the
definition of material mass. These have indeed their appro-
priateness. We find that volume is a variable involved in
social conduct. The volume of suggestion makes it more
effective. The number engaged in the action affects the con-
duct of the participants in an altered sense of responsibility
and in the checks and releases that obtain. We find, too,
that density or proximity has its corresponding effect. It
gives a peculiar reality and vividness to the relation, which is
particularly marked in crowd action. But these variables, if
used in any limited sense, are not the only ones. To understand
the psychic state or inertia, we must take account of the peculiar
equilibrium at the time, within the group in which we wish to
produce effects. This may be a static equilibrium in the way
of habits and traditions, or a moving equilibrium in the way of
certain tendencies which the group is striving to realize. In
each case the sort of equilibrium that exists conditions our
action. Timeliness of suggestion is important if we would
accomplish results. In an equilibrium moving in the opposite
direction from our intent, we may find that hitting it laterally,
or by indirect suggestion, encounters less inertia than hitting
it head on. Again, as regards constitution, we find that we
must take account of the individual characteristics of the
components in the way of inherited and derived tendencies.
The mental constitution conditions the type of action which
we can expect. We must know our people, their race traits
of instinct and temperament, and their psychological tendencies
of needs, ambitions, and aversions. This is quite as necessary
as knowing the elements which enter into the chemical com-
pound. In either case, if we fail to take account of the reactive
properties of our elements, we may find ourselves unwilling
participants in an explosion. We must try to discover, too,
the amount of emotional excitement which is necessary for
the specific reaction to take place. Social compounds have
their boiling point and freezing point, their point of solvency
and crystallization, as truly as chemical elements. We must

44 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

find what degree of affirmation or passion will precipitate the
special type of reaction. As in the case of dynamite, the in-
stability of the structure may make the effect out of all pro-
portion to the releasing stimulus. Witness the present war
of the European nations.

To understand a social kinetic system we must take account
of the organizing relation, as well as the variables of its constitu-
tion. We must find the thought form, the ruling passion, the
dominant purpose, which makes the tendencies converge in
one direction, be the interaction between individuals within
the group, between the individual and the group or between
groups. Sometimes lust for power, sometimes love of wealth,
sometimes self-preservation, sometimes racial prejudice, some-
times loyalty to truth and right form the organizing bond.
But always there is a striving for unity and simplification, for
a new equilibrium, and this gives direction to the struggling
motives. And as in physical systems, the movement is direct
or in a straight line, except as there are interferences to overcome
or go around, so in the social system. In the end, ideal unities
are the only ones which can succeed in giving an adequate and
durable direction to the various claims. Unified action must
be reasonable action.

In social systems, as in simpler systems, there must be such
recurrence of traits and situations as makes prediction possible.
The difference lies in the enormous complexity of the social
situation. By means of statistics, we can, to a certain extent,
eke out individual observation ; and in regard to some types of
reactions such as marriages, births, suicides, etc., our curves
are fairly constant; or, at any rate, the deviations are clear.
For understanding the deeper motives and effects of human
conduct, we need historic perspective. But here, as in the
simpler systems, the facts have their own perspective of which
we must take account, relative though our interpretation must
necessarily be, in virtue of the fact that history is potentially
infinite and that interpretation is of the very essence of the
creative human process.

In analyzing energy systems we have selected our illustrations
from the kinetic state of energy. This is due partly to the fact
that we found this procedure simpler, but more to the fact

PRAGMATIC ENERGISM 45

that this state of energy is more significant for metaphysical
purposes. The potential state, that of position or configura-
tion, derives its significance from the moving state. By poten- \
tial, we mean what energy can do when certain conditions are
supplied which are different from those obtaining. Thus, to
pass from energy of position to the kinetic state, there must,
somehow, be unequal distribution of energy. In the case of
falling bodies, we have unequal distribution of gravitational
energy. Thermodynamics is built on the unequal distribution
of heat. In the case of electrical energy, "if any cause operates
to add or remove electrons at one point, there is an immedi-
ate diffusion of electrons to reestablish equilibrium, and this
electronic movement constitutes an electric current. This
hypothesis explains the reason for the identity between the
laws of diffusion of matter, of heat, and of electricity. Electro-
motive force is then any cause making, or tending to make, an
inequality of electronic density in conductors, and may arise
from differences in temperature, i.e. thermo-electromotive force,
or from chemical action when part of the circuit is an elec-
trolytic conductor, or from the movement of lines of electro-
magnetic force across the conductor." 1 In the case of social
systems, it would be a case of the unequal distribution of
emotional-volitional excitement.

In the potential state, energy is just as real as in the kinetic
state, but is balanced or in equilibrium for the time being. In
the case of a building supported on pillars, the energy of the
pillars balances, for the time being, the gravitational energy.
In the case of human actions, certain tendencies to action are
balanced for the time being by inhibitions. A man would
steal, but he is afraid of the police. In either case, when
the balancing energy is withdrawn, we have an unequal dis-
tribution, and the persistent tendency becomes kinetic energy.

The term potential, however, is sometimes used when we ,
contrast expectancies under one set of kinetic conditions with I
those under another set. Certain electric vibrations can be-
come sensations of light to us when they act upon a photochemic
retina; and certain air vibrations can become sensations of
sound when they strike our ear and are transmitted to our cor-

1 Article on "Electrokinetics," Encyclopaedia Britannica, llth ed.

46 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

tical centers. Here the contrast is not between energy of con-
figuration and energy of motion, but between what happens
in the case of different reagents. In any case, the properties
which are observed in certain contexts cannot be said to pre-
exist independent of the contexts as was supposed by Anaxa-
goras, for example. According to him, the fruit of Demeter
which we eat, and the water which we drink must contain the
germs of blood and tissue and bone and hair which they^ei
to build up. The reason that things can produce such different
^results in different combinations is that everything contains
a portion of everything. It is only the proportion of the prop-
erties which varies, and which determines the character of
the particular thing. If pain is present in stimuli of a great
intensity, then it must be a latent property at any intensity.
But potential is not a category of the actual world, but of our
social expectancy. The chicken is not present in the fresh egg
at all. It would be nauseating to think so. Knowing that
certain properties appear in certain energy systems, we can
predict that they will recur when the conditions are repeated,
but they are only real within the system.

Potential energy, therefore, is not to be regarded as a dis-
tinct type, to be set over against such types as material and
electrical systems. It is rather a set of expectancies which we
may have in regard to any type when we contrast one condition
with other conditions. We may contrast the condition of
balance or equilibrium with work done when the special type
of energy exists in a kinetic state ; or we may contrast the work
done under one set of kinetic conditions with that done under
another set. Nature obviously does not know the word poten-
tial. It is a contrast which is contributed by our mind. In
reality each reactive relation is uniquely determined, — in
the case of material systems, by such characteristics as the
physical state, chemical composition, and temperature, by
geometrical pattern and direction, by cumulative numerical
values, and by distance. Potential is not a characteristic which
figures in the determinations of a system. The tendency to
read our expectancies into reality as though they existed prior
to and independent of the dynamic situation is only another
instance of the pathetic fallacy.

PRAGMATIC ENERGISM 47

Some Empirical Laws of Energy

We have dealt so far with different types of energy systems
and the factors which determine such systems. While each
type of system must be taken as unique and its specific char-
acteristics observed, there are some characteristics which seem
to hold for all systems of energy. t-Btsside the general postulates
of variable, form, and recurrence which hold for all systems,
there are certain empirical postulates which pertain to energy
systems in particular. These general characteristics are some-
times called laws, though this is somewhat of a misnomer since
they have only been verified for some limited systems. Due
of these is the law_^f_j^nservationjQ.f energy and closely asqn-
ciated with this is the conservatio]Q_of_ma§g, The law of con-
servation of energy has definite meaning when we deal with
special energy systems. In a material system, for example, it
signifies that when a certain amount of energy disappears
as motion, it reappears as heat ; and the quantity of heat is
equivalent to the lost motion, though from the point of view
of available energy it is only in part convertible into motion.
It is equally easy to show the meaning of the law in the case
of an electrical system of energy. Energy which disappears
as electricity is found to reappear in the equivalencies of
mechanical motion, chemical decomposition, or heat. In
organic and social systems it is difficult to ascertain exact
equivalencies in the complexity of changes involved. But
here, too, we can in part, at any rate, note such equivalencies.
In fact it was in connection with the potentials of foodstuffs
in their relation to physiological activity, that Mayer first
suggested the law, which was afterwards tested for material
and electrical energies by Joule. It is clear that in organic
and mental work there is a relation between nourishment and
work done ; there is also an equivalent in the way of heat as
energy is used up. The heat of the skull, in the case of mental
activity, is found to increase, and can be measured, though
that of course is only one of the equivalents of mental work.
Here as in mechanical energy, we must take account of the
going on of the impulse itself and its effects in kind, which
it would not seem possible to measure in an exact way. When

48 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

you try to state the law of conservation of energy as true of
all systems, Poincare is quite right that it is necessarily vague.
It signifies that there is some sort of constancy, that there are
equivalencies, but it furnishes no definite content. Even so,
however, it has more meaning than the old barren formula of
identity in difference.

The law of conservation of mass or inertia is similarly empir-
ical. It has been verified for some of the simpler systems
of energy. Gravitational mass can be taken as practically
constant at a certain point of the earth's surface. In the case
of electrical mass we can measure the inertia of the current or
electromagnetic field. In the more complex forms of energy,
such as the organic and social systems, we are equally aware
of the reality of inertia, and must deal with it, though we have
no exact way of measuring it. We know, in any case, that
inertia varies with motion. A moving body presents a differ-
ent inertia from a body at rest. In the case of high velocities,
approximating the velocity of light, there is a sudden increase
of mass. Mass also varies with direction. A body in motion
presents greater inertia to a body moving in the opposite
direction than to a lateral impulse. This is equally true of the
inertia of material bodies, of electric currents, and of social
inertia. The constancy of mass in any case is a pragmatic
affair.

J<£hother characteristic, which seems to be practically general
so far as our observation is able to go, has been called the law
_of degradation of energy. There is a tendency for energy to
move from a higher to a lower potential. Since activity de-
pends upon an unequal distribution of potentials, there would
seem to be a tendency for the available energy to decrease,
and for the universe to run down. This is particularly notice-
able in connection with the constant tendency for a certain
amount of energy to be dissipated as heat which can only in
part be made available; but it holds wherever there are un-
compensated expenditures of energy. ixThis law does not con-
tradict the law of conservation of energy since the sum total
of energy would still remain constant, even if all available energy
were diffused into random molecular motions, such as we ob-
serve in the Brownian movement. While the degradation of

PRAGMATIC ENERGISM 49

energy seems to be inevitable, from the point of view of our
limited survey and control, it cannot be regarded as an ultimate
law of the universe. The Greeks with inferior tools, but a
superior imagination, realized this. In the words of Empedo-
cles: "For if they (the elements) have been passing away con-
tinually, they would not be now." l Maxwell showed that an
omniscient demon, by sorting all the greater velocities on one
side of an imaginary partition, and all the lesser velocities on
the other side, could create new available energy. "This shows
that the principle of the dissipation of energy has control over
the actions of those agents only, whose faculties are too gross
to enable them to grapple individually with the minute por-
tions of matter which are the seat of energy." 2 If the universe
is infinite in time, there must be some compensating agency
corresponding to Maxwell's omniscient demon which keeps the
universe wound up. It remains true, nevertheless, that for
our practical purposes energy systems are in part, at any rate,
irreversible.

Any postulate, which is based on a one way process, — such
as the law of equilibrium, the law of least stress, Spencer's law
of evolution as a passing from homogeneity to heterogeneity,
with a corresponding dissipation of motion, — can only have
significance for limited systems within our experience. If we
apply them to reality in its wholeness, without compensation,
they imply a finite beginning and end of our world. In an in-
finite past, any one way process of finite changes must have
run its course innumerable ages ago.

Anothgr characteristicjyhich seems_tp be universal is that of
rhythm. We have long been familiar with the rhythmic char-
acter of some of the large movements that give us the periodicity
which is the basis of our time measurements, whether in the
rhythmic functions of the organism or of our astronomic system.
We have observed, too, the rhythm in the evolution of life forms
where periods of stability seem to alternate with periods of
mutation ; and we are familiar with a similar rhythm in the
social history of the race. It is only recently, however, that
Planck's theory of quanta has called our attention to the same

1 Burnet's translation, line 90.

1 Encyclopaedia Britannica, llth ed., article, "Energy."

50 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

rhythmic character in the more minute and simpler systems of
energy where we seem to observe the systole and diastole of
nature's heart. Energy seems to proceed by finite drops
rather than by continuous and infinitesimal gradations. Mo-
ments of potential and active energy alternate. It is also
discontinuous as regards the quantitative conditions of its
activity. Effects of a characteristic kind take place only
when a certain threshold of inertia has been overcome. This
is illustrated in the physiological realm by Weber's law, which
formulates the fact that certain differences in sensation can
be perceived only when the stimulus is increased by a definite
ratio of the previous amount.

lr Wehave seen that relativity is a fundamental characteristic
of energy_jsyj3tems. Propertles~vary with the~syslem. We
can speak" of no properties in the abstract. Our standards of
measurement are subject to variation no less than the things
measured. For practical purposes, we standardize our units
of measurement by making the conditions as stable as we can.
But at best the conditions of which we can take account are
limited. If our standards and the things to be measured vary
alike with reference to conditions outside of our observation,
we are necessarily ignorant of such variations, and for practical
purposes they do not concern us. But theoretically the thought
is uncanny and disquieting. We know of no absolute position
in space or absolute system of relations. Motion is for us
relative to a limited system of positions which we have selected
for provisional purposes. K)ur generalizations, whether of facts
or values, are circumscribed by the relative systems of our ex-
perience. Our standards of measurement, whether of energy,
tune, or space, are all alike pragmatic. They are conveniences
within the particular conditions with which we happen to deal.
And so long as we can find our way and perform our common
tasks on the basis of them, they are practically valid. This
does not mean absolute agnosticism, since such properties as
we experience, and such relative relations as we can observe,
must be real in any case, however fragmentary they may be,
and however much more intelligible they might become in
more comprehensive systems. Nor does relativity mean
neutralism. It is only our intellectual abstractions that are

PRAGMATIC ENERGISM 51

neutral. Things for us must be known as ensembles of prop-
erties within energy systems. As such, they do real work.
When we speak of activity as the common characteristic of
all our real systems, it is not the abstract concept of activity
which does work, but activity as uniquely determined within
the special system with its movement and form. Neutralism
is the emasculated ghost of the old superstition of abstract,
independent entities, — the grin without the old metaphysical
cat of inert substance, but none the less reminiscent of that
beast. Not even mathematical entities have any meaning
except as predicative functions within a system, though here
the system is analytic, determined purely by our assumed ini-
tial postulates. Energetic systems are empirical. Their prop-
erties must be discovered a posteriori.

The Relation of Energy Systems to One Another

It is the custom of science to deal with systems of energy
as closed systems. We have seen, however, that certain char-
acteristics overlap and seem to hold for all energy systems. The
question naturally arises as to the relation of these systems to
one another. Can we find a common denominator? Science
deals with special systems and their characteristics. The
transition from one system to another — from gases to liquids
and solids, from the chemical elements to their compounds,
from material systems to electrical and mental systems, with
the unique ensemble of properties in each case — science takes
as a matter of fact. It recognizes the discontinuities in nature
as well as the continuities. Whether we are concerned with
conditions that are under our control, as in the production of
the compound, water, from hydrogen and oxygen in the chemical
laboratory, or with conditions antecedent to our experience by
vast geologic ages, and still unknown to us, as in the case of
the compound, life, science accepts new beginnings as facts,
and observes and catalogues the characteristics of the new
system as best it can.

Philosophy cannot know more than science about matters
with which science deals. It has no business to stick to inert
substance when science has found the conception of energy
the more fruitful one. It has no right to pass upon the facts

52 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

or theories of science so far as these are based on experience,
and found serviceable in meeting our practical problems. But
it is the province of philosophy to try to understand science by
correlating its results with each other, and with the permanent
demands of the race.

- It jwould seem, in_the_Jirsj;_j3lace> that ^creatiye^ synthesis is
of_the very nature of reality We must accept the new qualities
and values as gifts, whether it be the compounding of mechanical
forces in a new direction, or the properties of chemical com-
pounds, or a new life unity, or a new social bond. In each
case, we must take account of the properties unique to the
specific situation, as well as observe the persisting constants.'
In each case, we must follow the lead of experience, and shape
our theories accordingly. Each energy system with its prop-
erties must be taken as real. It has just such properties and
relations as are manifest in the system, whether they be the
simpler properties of material systems, or the more complex
properties of such systems as life and mind. There is nothing
occult about energy, except as our ignorance makes it so.
In the second place, systems of. energy, as we find them in
There are no closed systems except

for our abstract purposes of description. They make definite
differences to each other. They interpenetrate and interlock
into one energetic world. Energies, throughout the complexi-
ties of systems, retain their primal property of doing work.
They are ever expended into other energies and reimbursed
from them in the great clearing house of nature. The cleavages
are of our own making. They are due to our assumptions, not
to reality. When, for example, science held to the hypothesis
of inert substances, acting on each other by impact — inert,
extended, material substances and inert, non-extended, mental
substances — as its working model of reality, it was difficult to
see how material energy could in any way make a difference to
mental. It would be equally difficult to see how it could make
any difference to electrical systems, where likewise molecular
models do not seem to apply. In either case, we should have
to invoke parallelism with its absurd results to bolster up our
initial assumptions. But our intellectual models cannot alter
the facts. The real units of reality, we have seen, are not

PRAGMATIC ENERGISM 53

ijaert entities, but energy systems, in one type of which material
properties constitute a differential characterigtic. The ener-
getic conception of reality leaves us free to follow the lead of
the facts, and to recognize such continuities and discontinuities,
such uniqueness and interdependence as we find. Electricity
gives rise to mechanical and chemical changes; and they, in
turn, serve to liberate electricity ; and while the latter is more
subtile and pervasive, it is the material world which canalizes
our electrical energies and makes them serviceable. Plant life
is dependent upon the material systems for nutriment and
framework, and upon light and heat for the processes of
assimilation and growth. The mental type of system leans
upon the material and organic systems. It requires proper
nutriment, proper conditions of temperature and light, proper
bodily position, proper rhythms of rest, in order to do its work,
not to mention its dependence upon neural structure. It is
clear that it is the more complex systems that overlap and are
correspondingly dependent upon simpler systems. Heat would
seem to be the lowest and most amorphous type of energy from
our point of view, as the more complex energies seem to be
dissipated as heat, and thus seemingly lost as available energy.
But as we have already pointed out, this can hold only for
our limited perspective and powers of control.

legality reveals_itself in many ^systejns. It is matter, it is
light, it is electricity, it is mind, it is truth, right, and beauty.
It is all of these and many others. All the varying phases
belong to it, and one is no more real than the other. It is
" day and night, winter and summer, war and peace, satiety and
hunger; but it takes various shapes, just as fire, when it is
mingled with different incenses, is named according to the savor
of each." l The more complex systems furnish a greater variety
of properties, but however imposing they may be, they must
trail along and draw their sustenance from the simpler, even
as the ivy trails along and draws its sustenance from the soil.
While the more complex systems logically overlap the simpler,
which they presuppose as conditions and instruments, this does
not mean that the simpler have no existence of their own, but are
always dissolved or taken up into the more complex. When they

'Adaptation of Heraclitus, fr. 36, Bui-net's translation.

54 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

are so taken up, they cease to exist as simpler. Water, as an
individual compound, has definite, characteristic properties;
while water, taken up into other compounds, inorganic and
organic, is no longer water. It has lost its individuality. But
the water that satisfies thirst, with many other unique prop-
erties, has claims of its own. We do not want it merely
abrogated into more complex systems. We would not want
to drink water that has entered as a constituent into blood, or
let the children play with water that has been taken up into
nitroglycerine. In_ jthe_economy of the whojg^_one_systejn
cannot be said ^o_be_mQre_necessary_or real Jjiajijbhe rest.
Here, at any rate, the words of Browning hold :

" * * * Nor soul helps flesh
More now, than flesh helps soul."

Of each, we must say, in characterizing reality: "That art
thou." There is no substrate except the interlocking, inter-
dependent energies ; no unity, except the form of each, and of
the multicolored whole.

The passion for simplicity, however, is incurably rooted in
the human mind, and there will always be the attempt to
reduce the concrete variety of the world into some primordial
system, be it matter, electricity, or mind. This seems a
mistaken and fruitless quest. We must adhere to the prag-
matic postulate without which we could not proceed at all,
viz. thatj:ealityjLS_whatj^

contexts. The process is~lundamentally a creative process.
It is not a shuffling of neutral entities. The properties are
combining properties; they are uniquely determined by the
system. We have no right to dogmatize, whether in reading
backward from the more complex systems to the simpler ones,
or forward from the simpler to the more complex. We must
find our way on the basis of experience and take reality as it
exists at each stage of complexity.

v We can, indeed, classify systems on the basis of common
and differential traits; and we find that some can be treated
as varieties of one species. Thus it has been found that elec-
tricity, light, radiant heat, and magnetism can be successfully
dealt with on the basis of a common electronic theory, though

PRAGMATIC ENERGISM 55

their differentia are no less significant than before. It has
been suggested that nervous energy may be reduced to the
electrical type. Says Professor Gotch: "Physiology has defi-
nite grounds for believing that, as far as present knowledge
goes, both the production and cessation of central nervous dis-
charges are the expression of 'propagated changes, and that
these changes reveal themselves as physico-chemical changes
of an electrolytic character. The nervous process, which
rightly seems to us so recondite, does not, in the light of this
conception, owe its physiological mystery to a new form of
energy, but to a circumstance that a mode of energy displayed
in the non-living world occurs in colloidal electrolytic structures
of great chemical complexity." While science thus seems to
have succeeded in simplifying large domains of facts, so long
seemingly heterogeneous, it has also discovered new varieties
and complexities which challenge further reduction and corre-
sponding overhauling of old categories, as in the case of radio-
active energies. $<For pragmatic purposes, three general types
of systems would seem to stand out — tbB_material_type of

gystem_wjth its diffprpTitifl. nf grfvyit.fl.tjnnfl.1 ma.ss a.nrl molecular
motion ; the electrical type_pf system_with the electron__as its_
ene^gy_uniLj. and the mental type of system where conatiyje
tendency, with its possibilities of consciously^ directed action,
cognition^ and appreciation, is fundamental. But such a
classification is purely a matter of convenience, and throws no
light upon the process itself.

We seem to get more light when we take the evolutionary
point of view. No doubt our~systems of energy, as we observe
them to-day, are the result of a long process of selection and
survival. Darwin showed this in a classic way for the organic
type of system. It is equally clear for the more complex mental
systems, on the basis of which we must understand human
history. Nor does the inorganic world lie outside this evo-
lutionary conception. The properties of matter, the dis-
tribution and concentration of the elements, and the stability
of the present material structure — these are all the result of
a selective survival process. It does not seem probable that
this marvelous adaptation of the material system to telescope
into and form a fit environment for more complex systems such

56 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

as life, can be accounted for on the basis of mere chance.1 It
is "more congenial" to our mind, to use Poincar6's phrase, to
assume intelligent selection within the process, however much
such selection may surpass our faculties. That systems exist
at all — relationships of processes statable in terms of a few
simple principles — would seem in itself, as Newton long ago
pointed out, an indication of rational emphasis within the
world of which our reason is a part.

While the empirical generalizations about evolution must
always have significance for our reading of reality, their meta-
physical interpretation is often confused. Here the mechanical
tendency of the human mind has come in to vitiate the reading.
While we can trace a sequence from simpler to more complex
systems, within a given series, we cannot say, therefore, that
the properties of the more complex systems are compounded
out of the properties of the simpler ones, ^ff complex life-
systems have evolved from unicellular organisms, it does not
follow that they are a mere mechanical combination of the
simpler organisms. New properties have been developed
as a result of the organization, differentiation, and selection
within the process, in its adaptation to a larger environment.
These properties must be taken for what they are in each stage
of development.

/^Owing to the early progress, as well as to the convenience,
of mechanical science, it was natural that material systems
should come to be emphasized as the essential type of reality,
and that the more complex systems should be regarded as
compounded out of material properties. But while we must
recognize material properties as real within the systems where
we find them, we have no reason to regard them as any more
real than the unique properties or ensembles of properties which
appear in more complex systems, such as life and mind. Even
if the material type of system were absolutely earlier, it would
not follow that it is more real. As a matter of fact, the material
type of system is just as much an evolution as the organic type.
And while, in our limited series of geological evolution, the
material system had to evolve to a certain stage before life

1 See in this connection "The Fitness of the Environment," by Professor
Lawrence Henderson.

PRAGMATIC ENERGISM 57

forms could appear, the two types of systems have for long ages
evolved together and a corresponding fitness been established.
Nor does it follow from the temporal antecedence of the material
properties that they could give rise to the properties of the
more complex systems, or that the material properties are of
greater importance in understanding reality. The real ener-
gies which we deal with in evolution have other potentialities
than material properties; and it is these potentialities that
come to light in the creative process of the universe. It is not
the properties of extension, weight, cohesiveness, etc., which
constitute life, though they are present, and form an important
index to our description of life processes. Life is characterized
by the ensemble of properties which is unique to its own system
and which cannot be said to exist at all in material systems.
The properties of the simple systems must be treated as in-
strumental when we deal with the more complex systems.
They are, as it were, handles or signs, by means of which we
can lay hold of and, to a certain extent, describe and control
the conditions of the more complex systems. Thus we are
able to produce a chemical compound with its new properties,
once we know the constituent elements and the proper conditions
of temperature, etc. Thus the great nature chemist was
able to produce, through the energies of a seemingly dead world,
the properties of life; but the deadness exists only in our in-
tellectualistic misconceptions. To try to account for life as '
a compound of material properties is as reasonable as to try
to account for the characteristic thinking of a man on the basis '
of his size and weight. These are indeed important for certain
kinds of behavior of human beings — getting a suit of clothes
for example — but they do not as such account for their think-
ing. -O^V ^v

{JThe electrical theory is subject to the same criticism as the i
old material atomism. We cannot account for matter as a
mere arithmetic sum of negative electric charges any more
than we can account for life as a sum of material properties.
The material atom is, on any theory, a unique system with its
own combining relations with other atoms, its own unique
properties, which are not the properties of free electrons ; and
adding an unknown element of positive electricity does not

58 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

clarify the situation, any more than adding vital impulse to a
material system explains life. Whether such an element is
proved to exist or not, we should still have to take account of
the concrete system of matter itself with its concentration,
pattern, durability, and reactive properties. On any theory,
the material system is uniquely real; and we must take the
characteristics as they exist in the system itself. There is
indeed an interesting analogy, as pointed out by J. J. Thomson
and others, between the figures assumed by magnets in an
electrodynamic field and the periodic law of the elements. But
mathematical laws sometimes hold for decidedly disparate
systems. Witness the formula for kinetic energy. The
different conductivity of different elements would not prove,
any more than disprove, an electrical substrate. A man
carrying a log is not necessarily a log. Even if the char-
acteristic properties of matter, such as extension and weight,
can be simplified for purposes of description by being stated
in terms of motion and distance, or if the material atom can be
regarded for certain purposes as a halfway house for treating
facts which are further dissociable into electric charges with
their particular and constellation velocities, it still remains
true that extension and weight are practical determinants
which matter does possess, and which electric charges, as we
ordinarily understand them, do not possess.
l/To try, again, to account for matter as mind, — "degraded"
or "estranged" mind, "mind hide-bound with habit," — is
at best a confusing use of language. ^Material systems do not
have the properties of mental systems. They are as unique
as the latter and have their own claims to reality. They are
not dignified one whit by being associated with the name of
mind. There is no reason, moreover, for using opprobrious
epithets about matter. It has its own place and importance
in the economy of reality. It is the unique distribution, con-
centration, and durability of the material world which makes
possible the more complex systems of life and mind. Through
the correlative evolution of matter, reality makes possible
that other series of evolution which terminates in significant
and appreciative reactions to the world. The material and
vegetative systems furnish the stored-up energy, the stable

PRAGMATIC ENERGISM 59

frame, the means of canalization of the more subtile energies.
They furnish the tools, — direct in our bodily movements,
indirect in the case of material instruments, — which make
intelligent behavior possible.

There is one sense in which we can speak of the more complex
systems as higher and more real. They reveal more fully
the potencies, the actuality of the world of energies in which
we live and move and have our being. They overlap logically.
They imply the simpler systems, such as the material and elec-
trical, as their background and instruments. They Indicate,
in a more concrete way, the direction, the formal organization
of the larger world, the system of systems, from which our
fragmentary systems are abstractions. It is because this
system of systems, with its potencies and form, interpenetrates
the humblest parts of the universe, and gives direction to the
whole, that it seems as though the simpler systems produced
the more complex. But what we call "matter" is more than
matter. The seemingly inert energies of our world are fraught
with infinite potentialities as they enter into the more and more
complex systems, and yield up the for-us hidden properties,
in the stress of heat, in electrolysis, in organic assimilation, in
the emotional excitement of mind associations. We may well
say with Browning :

" Well, this cold clay clod was man's heart :
Crumble it, and what comes next ? Is it God ? "

*In the case of one system, the various systems do indeed
converge into one unique relation so far as we are concerned.
And that is in the cognitive system. It is mere tautology to
say that for us to speak of energies they must first be known.
In.so far as known, they are indeed uniquely determined by the
cognitive relation^ But it is a false assumption to suppose that
our knowing the forms and properties of systems constitutes
their existence. We can know the systems because they exist
and have a certain form and certain properties. This is as
true of our own past as of the Milky Way. Our taking account
of them is an afterthought. It does not alter the unique sys-
tems of which we take account. The stellar system, the prop-
erties of our material environment, the reactive properties of

60 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

plants, the civilization of Greece, existed — they had their own
properties and form — long before we took account of them.
Hence, we can abstract from our personal perspectives and
socialize them. We socialize our space orientation, which in
the first instance depends upon the organism and its needs. To
make intelligible our fleeting perceptions, we interpolate our
gravitational and electrical systems. We discover their prop-
erties and mathematical form. In mental systems, we have
again a unique reality which we must try to understand. Only
in such systems is the ensemble of properties known as values
possible. These systems are indisputably real when they
exist, and are irreducible to other systems. They are " the
master light of all our seeing."

In these conscious mental continuities, reality reveals to us,
not only the formal relations which we discover and retrace
as truth, but the demand for justice, the property to have
mercy, the response of beauty. This is true not only in our
human relations, but still more in those higher continuities
which we call communion with God. These higher contexts
must be taken to reveal the nature of reality, quite as truly
as the simpler contexts which we deal with in mechanics. Each
system makes its own unique creative contribution; each
system furnishes a solution in which reality shows more of its
reactive properties. Thus electrical systems reveal properties
which lie outside our material systems. In the chemistry of
the organic systems, we find marvelous powers of assimilation
and response, which, so far, lie beyond our artificial imitation.
In our mental systems, with their greater capacity for storing
up potential energy in the way of inhibitions and facilitations
of behavior, this complexity of properties increases still more.
It is here that the unique responses of value arise as creative
additions to our world. These are as much a part of the
reality of the world as the chemical responses. They constitute
for us its choicest part. The universe, in its varying systems
of creativeness, calls to our mind the Chinese swallow which
gives us our edible nests. First it produces a nest of largely
external material and contributes but little of its substance to
the frame. In its second building, after being deprived of its
first nest, it labors harder and secretes more of itself. In the

PRAGMATIC ENERGISM 61

third nest, in the pain and anxiety of frustration, it yields up
its very lifeblood and colors the nest with its crimson. So in
the rare solutions of our intense emotional excitement, the
energy of the universe, in the pain and stress of clashing interests
and the threatened defeat of its ideal instincts, contributes its
very soul as it labors to give birth to new values, and colors
the gray world of matter with its rainbow glory. Here the
systems of the universe not only exist but have significance.

And who shall say that our limited mental systems are the
last word of reality's revelation ? The energy which shows its
marvelous properties in all these systems and which, even in
the simplest, reveals a sublimity which humbles our power and
insight, may well be capable of higher creative syntheses, more
comprehensive actualities and insights than those associated
with our organisms and our social institutions. That such a
synthesis is real, we have an intimation in the vast correlative
adjustments of nature of which we get glimpses in science, and
in those instinctive demands for harmony and beauty which
make themselves but feebly felt in us. We can see and appre-
ciate but piecemeal and in the dark glass of our prejudices.
The directive power of the universe of which we have intima-
tions in our higher continuities no doubt has a more adequate
way. In the meantime we must have faith in our own insight,
relative though it be.

In this brief survey of energy, we have implied throughout
other categories than energy properties. Only so could we
understand energy in action or as doing work. Otherwise
it would be congealed, — frozen energy. We have implied
geometrical properties and time properties which must figure
in energy systems. We have also implied form, without
which energy systems would be unstatable. Elsewhere we have
given more adequate consideration to these characteristics.
We must here turn to a further analysis of energy properties,
as they appear in the world of things and minds.

CHAPTER IV
Do THINGS EXIST?

AT first sight nothing could seem more obvious than that
things, individual blocks, exist. In fact, tl^tjhings exist as
individual and distinct has seemed far clearer_to__ common sense
than that minds are individual. We have only to recollect
that Aristotle found mind (active nous) impersonal and uni-
versal, while the body, with the functions depending upon it,
seemed to furnish the individual substrate, and that Thomas
Aquinas made the body the principle of individuation, without
which human souls, like the angels, would merge into the genus.
It is unnecessary to say that philosophy has changed front in
this respect, and finds it comparatively easy to recognize the
individuality of minds, while the independence and individuality
of things has well-nigh disappeared in the general continuum.

The Antipathy to Things

There have been several motives for this attitude towards
the reality of things. It is hardly necessary to mention that
of temperamental mysticism, which will always seek reality in
haziness and away from distinctions. Our going into a trance
or going to sleep does obliterate plurality so far as we are con-
cerned. But while it does away with the significance of dis-
tinctions for the dreamer, does it also do away with the existence
of distinctions? I do not believe so. I cannot help feeling
that we are wiser when we are awake than when we are asleep,
and that reality is such as we must take it in our systematic
conduct. I would rather trust the tried-out distinctions of
common sense and science than the dreamy confluence of
mysticism.

Our antipathy to distinctions, however, may not be due
merely to temperamental laziness. It may be due to conceptual.

62

DO THINGS EXIST? 63

difficulties. Thus the difficulties of conceiving plural things and
their interactions in space lead -kataa. to conceive the uniuersfiL
as_a polyphoni£jgLnity — an "aesthetic unity of purpose in the
world which, as in some work of art, combines with convincing
justice things which in their isolation would seem incoherent
and scarcely to stand in any relation to one another at all." 1
Bradley, in a similar way, having found the problem of relations
and of motion insuperable on his abstract basis of procedure,
has recourse to an aesthetic absolute where the plurality of
things and their ceaseless struggle is at rest. I cannot see,
however, how we are justified in reading plurality out of the
world because its existence interferes with our ready-made
concepts. New concepts, perhaps the electrical definition of
physical atoms, may make it easier to see how a world of
relatively stable things may coexist and interact. In the mean-
time, if we must acknowledge diversity of things for purposes
of conduct, we must hold that they have some distinct reality,
even while we are perfecting our conceptual models. In any
case, thought must wait upon facts. Where we find symphonic
unity of system, there we must of course acknowledge it. But
when the facts do not warrant such intimate unity, we have
no right to read it into them on the basis of a priori conceptions.
Even within our own individual history, we are far from find-
ing a closely woven purposive unity. We are the creatures
largely of habit a-n<i inst.inpt. We must provisionally acknowl-
edge different types of continuity of which unity of purpose is
only one.

The intellectualist's condemnation of things owes its con-
vincingness to certain deep-rooted prejudices. One of these
prejudices is that individuality means indivisibility, and con-
versely that what can be dmtte3 into parts cannot be individ-
ual. The substance of Spinoza and the atoms of Democritus
are alike indivisible. This difficulty of indecomposability
would of course equally influence our view of psychic unities.
We would have to deny the reality of the self, because it is
complex and capable of analysis. The art object would fall
to pieces the moment we analyzed it. Hence you have either
a heap of pieces on the one hand or a mystical, undifferentiated

111 Metaphysics," English translation, Vol. II, p. 60.

64 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

unity on the other. Now, what we must do here is to face the
problem honestly and cast out prejudice. We can, as a matter
of fact, recognize a self or a work of art as a unity, if the com-
plexity converges in a direction or towards a purpose. ILln -
the organic or inorganic thing we can recognize a common im-
pulse or movement, We must recognize the thing as one, even
though it is complex and physically divisible.

This prejudice is closely connected with another — tfre, vira*
of abstraction, useful though abstraction is in its own place

^ittiy- ' ' """•••» ' °

in the economy of thought. This prejudice consists in empha-
sizing the disjunctive function of the mind and in ignoring
the conjunctive. Thus it is regarded as self-evident that the
disparate qualities — the creatures of linguistic substantiation
— exist ; but their interpenetration, their coexistence in the
one thing, is regarded as the insuperable problem. And it is
insuperable, if you take the disparate abstractions for granted
and try to compound a thing out of them. But this is starting
at the wrong end of the process. We must go back to the
concrete object. While _our thought can abstract qualities,
these qualities do not exist first as abstract entities and then
compound themselves. They are ways of Jtaking things in
concrete contexts. If we can^scnminate distinctions witliin
theTobject, it is quite true that we must regard such distinctions
as real. But if we must take the distinctions as coexisting,
interpenetrating, flowing into each other, cohering in one pat-
tern and movement, it is also true that they can so interpene-
trate and coexist. Our conjunctive way of taking the object
of experience needs no more justification than our disjunctive
or analytic way. If the distinctions do coexist and interpene-
trate, they can do so.... We do not make the transitions or
unities, any more than the discreteness, in taking account of
them. And Berkeley is quite right in maintaining that no
additional entity, no substance, or x, can simplify the fact,
which is given with the qualities, viz. that they interpenetrate
and persist. To trace these coexistences and transitions of
the facts of experience is the business of science, quite as much
as that of the analysis of properties.

It is strange that the unity of the thing should have caused
so much trouble, while most philosophers have been willing to

DO THINGS EXIST? 65

take the diversity within the thing for granted. I cannot see
why one is not as mysterious or as clear as the other. If you
assume that a thing is mere abstract unity, it is true that no
logic could get diversity out of it. If, again, you start with a
collection of independent, disparate qualities, it will no doubt
be impossible to get any unity into it. The simpler way is to
proceed empirically and not to jnalcft q.haurd pjagiirnptjopfi If
we can distinguish diversity of function, then, of course, there
is diversity. If diversity of function, on the other hand,
makes a thing go to pieces, if the only transitions possible are
those of identity of property, then we should at least be as
consistent as the father of intellectualism, Parmenides, and
with him rule out all diversity as inconceivable, leaving the
residuum of the homogeneous block of "being."

Another intellectualist prejudice of which we must rid our-
selves is the assumption that an individual, in order to be (
distinct, must distinguisk-oiself. On this basis, only self-con-
scious individuals could exist, and they only so long as they are
. self-conscious. We ourselves would vanish as individuals the
moment we go to sleep or when our interest becomes absorbed
in the objective situation. I do not believe this a valid as-
sumption. Neither the existence nor the significance of an
individual need depend upon self -discrimination. We have
individual significance so long .as any experience distinguishes/
us, whether we are awake or asleep. And _the. .existence of an
individual is in no wise dependent upon being distinguished.
A thing may exist as individual a million years before it
is distinguished. Ii^ is individual not because it distinguishes
itself or we distinguish it, but because, when we do take account
of it, we must treat it as distinct for the purpose in question.

Nor is it necessary to regard self-subsistence or independence
as the condition of reality. If only the self-subsistent were
real, then only an indivisible whole, as Spinoza maintains,
could be real. Now, it is quite true that the parts must, some-
how, hang together. At least the physical world hangs to-
gether by its gravitational threads. But such hanging together
need not prevent a certain individual play of the parts. The
earth hangs together with the solar system, but that does not
prevent the earth from having its own motion and history.

66 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

For finite purposes at least, it-is.. crau^jgot^Jp take ^reality
piecemeal. And reality has parts and distinctions just in so
far as it lends itself to such individual taking, however much
the parts may cohere with a larger pattern. It is such plural-
ism which makes practical adjustment and scientific sorting
and identification relevant. The parts or aspects are real, if
we must meet them as real. And the recognition of the char-
acter and reality of the part may, for the purpose in question,
be more essential than the reality of the whole.

It is not necessary, on the other hand, in order to recognize
the plurality of the world, to fall into the opposite intellectualist
abstraction, that of absolutel^LJlldfiDfindfint_J2lliiaL-fiDtii^
such as the old-fashioned atoms or monads. Such an assump-
tion is necessarily suicidal, for since such entities could not
make any difference to each other or to any perceiving subject,
it becomes impossible to speak of them as having properties
or even to prove their existence. Even zero must be part of a
thought context in order to be considered as existing. Things
are as independent and impenetrable as we must take them.
They may exist, as we have seen, independent of our cognitive
context. They may come and go, so far as our awareness is
concerned, without prejudice to their existence. But in some
context they must hang. I cannot conceive of individii^lfjf fl«
outside of any context at all, as making no difference to other
individuals, for it is through such difference to other individuals,
and in the last analysis to human nature, that we conceive of
an individual as existing at all. I can see only the possibility
of a relative pluralism — pluralism withits rough edges, its
overlapping ..identities — both from the existential and the
cognitiyejjidfi. No center liveth untojitself, in the isolatecT
sense of Leibniz's monad. But such relative pluralism prevents
in any case the blank monotony of Eleatic " being." ^.nd while
thejparts hang with each other, they must be considered asreaTaT
the whole. The whole has no reality abstracted from just such
parts. Tf +v.Q por.+a PI.? Tfri«rfrYp f,ft fJm wimffyfoe whole is no~~~
less relative to the parts. If we emphasize that individuals exist
and have significance only in contexts, it is well not to forget

j social or physical, andean

^
be identified in the variety of contexts into which they enter.

DO THINGS EXIST? 67

Another and more serious kind of objection has been raised
against the reality of things from the TTpra)yHitp4iiTi nftjr* nf
view, represented so brilliantly at the present time by Professor
^ejfiftOQv — If the imiverae_is an absolute flux, making sections
in the stream of change and calling them things must be a
purely artificial attitude — an illusion due to our gross sense
perception at best and justified only by its convenience for
practical purposes. To quote a recent statement of Bergson's :
"I regard thejvholejarceling out of things as relative to our
faculty of^Bgrception. Our senses, adjusted to the material
world, trace there lines of division which exist as directions,
carved out for our future action. It is our contingent action
which is reflected back in matter, as in a mirror, when our eyes
perceive objects with well-marked contours, and distinguish
them one from the other." l Things, therefore, have no real
existence. They are due merelyTo our practical purposes.
The real world is one of absolute fluency, where the past is
drawn up into the moving flow. Not extension, but interpene-
tration; not repetition, but absolute novelty and growffi~;~not
qualities, but change, characterize the real world, the key to
which must be found _in our own stream of consci^iiHTiess. ""i^Kia
real world can be grasped, not by the intellect, but by intuition,
which gives us the real How, as contrasted with the stereotyped
copy of the intellect. And how do we come to speak of things
at all, then ? By means of the intellect we form a space image
This image is like the cinematographic

copy of moving figures. It is a static picture of spatially
spread out and recorded changes which we substitute for the
real duration. But while the latter is characterized by inter-
penetration and indivisibility, the former is characterized by
extension and divisibility. Science decomposes the objects of
sense still further into molecules and atoms and centers of
force, but these pictures of science have no more reality than
the perceptual things. They are merely contrivances to deal
with the world of flux.

Such, in brief, is the view of Bergson, and it certainly carries
with it a great deal of truth. Our purposes are indispensable^
in the significant differentiation of our world ; and sometimes,

l Jour. Phil. Psychol. and Sci. Math., Vol. VII, No. 14, pp. 386 and 387.

68 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

no doubt, our marking the world off into parts is as artificial
as the astronomer's longitudes and latitudes and his names for
constellations. The world,.. too, from our finite point of view
at any rate, is a world where novelty and growth play an im-
portant part. I cannot admit, however, that the new Heracli-
teanism gives us the whole truth.

In the first place, we must be suspicious of ail absolutistic
formulas.. Absolute flux isjis impossible ^ofjgroof^afi Ahani^te
identity.. Bergson and Jt'armenides alike must found their
philosophy on intuition and conviction. I prefer the more
modest pragmatic way of taking the world.1 This means to
take the fa,^ at t.hmr fa.p.p. vahiR. ILfcheje seeins to be change^
and novelty, then, in so far, we must own it, whether our
novelty is a retracing of an absolute experience or is objectively
creative. Knowledge, .whatever claims to absoluteness we
may make, is after all n^r finite human raj-sign of reality^
and we have a PPPSS to n,o, flthpj And for us change and novelty
are real facts. But while we must recognize novelty and inter-
penetration as facts of our experience, it is also true that we
must recognize a certain amount of ponsfemcy. And this
constancy cannot be due merely to language and space objecti-
fication. Thaw* ynT1Rtr on the one hand, be constancy in our
meanings, our inner purposes ; and they are real processes.
^rjfi tfrprp must, on the other, be constancy on the part of the
processes referred to. Else constancy on the part of our
symbols would not avail. Suppose we had a world where
everything flowed but the symbols : in such a world we could
not recognize or use the symbols as the same. There could
be no such thing as intellect in such a world, because it, too,
would have to change. And even if memories and concepts
dipped into such a world from another universe, they would
be utterly useless where nothing repeats itself. The intellect
is an agency for prediction ; and what we must be able~~tb
predict is the real world of processes. Mind and things must
conspire to have science. Even in the cinematograph, you
have the constancy of the pictures and of the machinery which
repeats them ; and they are part of the real world.

1 My attitude to pragmatism I have explained in "Truth and Reality,'*
Macmillan, 1911, especially in Chapters IX and X.

DO THINGS EXIST? 69

Nor is it true of things, any more than of selves, that our
marking them off from their context is purely arbitrary. It is
difficult enough in either case ; and we cannot pull them, root
and all, without pulling a good deal of the context with them.
When we come to define what we mean by Caesar, we find that
he is very much entangled with the past out of which he
grew, with the age in which he struggled, and with the results
and opinions of his labors ever since. Yet for ah1 that he is a
well-marked character which we can understand and appreciate.
So with the thing — the^prganic individual, like the tree, or
the inorganic individual, like the stone or the crystal. In any
case, they are individual, when we must deal with them as
such; not when we mark them off arbitrarily, as in ~tlie"~case
of the rainbow. And this is true though the individual is
complex ; though it may consist of many interpenetrating im-
pulses, all traveling at diverse paces.

The Pragmatic Significance of .Things

When we come to define what we mean by the individuality
of a thing, the problem waxes more difficult. Psychology
gives us but scant help. As a matter of fact, it ha

to unfit us for the proper attitude to reality through its sub-
JEgtmstic tendency! what. ^ jntAnfL-mhan. WP speak of .&...
thins or a-"t on a thing is not a fusion of sensations, together
with the suggested sensory and ideational complex. This is
merely an account of the process of becoming aware of things

and not an account of the reality of things. TJiings can make

•--—•«••"•—•••••— i««— «•»•-— «««—_—.—1—-—^t——-wta— ••A*— f

sensible differences to our organism, but they are not constituted
by our perception. r£hey must be taken as preexisting in their
owji_conlexiisriprior to sucbjsensprv discrimination on our"
else our instincts would not be adjusted to them ; they could
fulfill no interest or need on the part of our will. The sensory
differences, for practical purposes, exist primarily as signs or
guides suggesting further control and use. The sight sensa-
tions, in the case of the infant, suggest the motor reaction of
active touch, which in turn suggests the reflexes of eating.

"What, then, indjvjduajjffi things?/lYFirst of all, from the
point of view of significance, they arejfrio'ividuated. as we have
seen, by the purposes which select them and which they fulfill.

70 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

They would have no individual significance except as thus
differentiated in our cognitive experience. ^ he_ Jhing must "*
embody a wilL Aristotle was quite right in saying that we
"cannot treat the thing as a mere collection. We cannot
regard the word as a mere collection of letters, hi so far
as it is an individual word. "We must seek the cause by
reason of which the matter is some definite thing." x For
Aristotle this means finding the final cause of the thing. Tn
artificial things like the word or the work of art, it is quite
plain that we must find the idea which is expressed. Can we
also find such an objective idea in natural things? No, we
cannot find it there. We must be satisfied if it has such dis-
tinctness of character and history as to fulfill a specific purpose
of ours,, whether it sustains the relation of a work of art to a
more comprehensive experience or not.

' Hi does not follow, however, that things are created or " faked "
by thus being taken over into our cognitive context. The selec-
tion and acknowledgment is forced, not arbitrary. The thing
must suggest an own center of energy. It must roll "but trb'ni
the larger field of experience, forcing attention to its own move-
ment and identity. Our cognitive meaning, so far from con-
stituting things, must tally with the things — terminate in our
perceptions of them — in order to be valid. — If— feho

real, it cannot be infinitely divisible, i.e. the form of the thing
cannot be merely of our own choosing. To be accorded objec-
tive existence, the thing must be acknowledged as having its
own impulse, its own history, its own pattern of parts, which
our ideas must copy sufficiently for identification and prediction.
And the thing may have to be acknowledged as having such
character and history, whether as old as the sun or as evanescent
as the ckiudlet.

Can we identify such things in our experience? In the case
of the organic thing, we seem to have a natural unity, com-
parable to that which we have in the case of the unity of the
ego, even though the former is not a significant unity. Ihejre
is a history which embodies a certain end or has a certain direc-
tion. To be sure, organisms may sometimes be divided without
destroying their life; and the lower organisms do propagate
i "Metaphysics," Bk. VII, Ch. XVII, 1.

DO THINGS EXIST? 71

their existence by spontaneous division. But the cell seems
to be even here a fairly definite entity. The unicellular or-
ganisms have an individual immortality which is only limited
by external accident.

When we come to inorganic thingsr the problem is difficult.
On the analogy of geometrical quantity it has sometimes been
held that physical things are infinitely divisible. Interesting
antinomies have been invented from Zeno down by playing
between the mathematical and the physical conception of
quantity. But we must not confuse mathematical divisibility
with physical divisibility. Empirically, what we call things
are, on ,tbe_ ojie-hand, ^-p^jftdBUlBiiiTi _^^n as individuals.
On the other Vi^.nd it is possiblft-foi_tiistirnniisTv rM
come to a limit in our division where we have to deal with a
final natural unity? We do for practical purposes at least.
The molecule, which, thanks to Perron, has now been definitely
identified and measured, seems like a distinct stopping place,
if we would preserve the character of the compound. And in
recent years interesting experiments have been made by Ruther-
ford and others to prove the real existence of the atom. These
results cannot be ruled out by any a priori theory as regards
infinite divisibility. The atom in turn seems to be a holding
company for energies which under certain conditions can act
individually. A smaller unit, the electron, it has been shown,
must be assumed to account for such phenomena as radio-
activity. The negative electric charge seems like a natural
unit. Is it final? We cannot say. All we can say is that
we have had no need so far of assuming a smaller unit. There
certainly is no evidence for infinite divisibility. Furthermore,
because units do not have absolute permanency and are them-
selves complex, that does not gainsay their individual reality,
while we can take them as individual. Ike chair is an individ-
ual while we can use it as a^ chair, however complex and un-
stable its structure.

It will be seen that Behave adopted the instrumental methoft
in dealing with the TfliJiliy r^ fhn thine n~i;'— +K^rif the
thing has no rneanjng ^r valyp. tfoaj; WP can Bharft with it* We
imisF~judge~~"it, therefore, by the ways in which we must take
it in realizing owe purposes ; and we must hold that its reality

72 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

is precisely what we must take it as in the service of our specific
will. Let us now try to sum up the pragmatic Significance of
the thing. In the first place, we have seen that we __ cannot
speak of things unless we have persistent identity — identity
both in thgjjjll£flfllfi& wtufih take the things and in the obj£uUy£.
processes which are taken. Unless we can take the same
processes over again and thus predict their recurrence, we
cannot speak of things. In a world of absolute flux, not even
the illusion of a thing could arise. /Tjiis__p_er^jg^SB^myjjjj^^
bility of identification of certain processes is the pragmatic

mt*

have to ignore in our conceptual taking of reality. As the
thing is capable of existing in many contexts, and as it may
have different reactions in different contexts, the idea .of po-
tential energy arises. The potential, or the core of the thing,
is the more of what the thing can do. The air can produce
sound. It can also furnish the prairie dust storm, it can convey
oxygen to the lungs, etc. As the contexts are not present,
perhaps, for doing all these things at once, we speak of the
others as possible reactions — the (for the time being) hidden
energy of the thing.

3b>in the second place, these ftypp.p.t.qmjflg Q1T wftT8 jrf! tekfoff t^1R
thing_arg^scciaJ. Things do not merely figure in my individual
experience, but they are capable of figuring in any number of
experiences in the same immediate way. ^bfi^Jutfin^not
merelv an individual, but a social, purpose. One reason for

^— *•«- . " •»-»-•. '1TL i -. - --. •, „ / ,re nil TlUMBi -li-*q • fftn.KyfT.

regarding social experience as more trustworthy is that social
experience is less subject to illusions and hallucinations. While
this is largely so and therefore furnishes an additional check,
illusions and hallucinations may be social for the time being.
The illusion of the moving railroad train is as social as any
perception. A whole crowd has been known to see a ghost.
§p being socia,!, iff not an mfallible.toRt, ,nf . "hjpjp,tjiyjj;y As such
perceptions, however, do not tally with further experiences,
they cannot be taken as things. Whether we deal with things,
therefore, from the point of view of individual or of social ex-
perience, qurjdeas of things can only be proven true as expe-
rience leans upon further experience in "a consistent' way.

has sometimes been stated that things are objective, be-

-•

DO THINGS EXIST? 73

cause the^are objects for several subjects. But this is invert-
ing the true relatioD^^tbrn^jare social "experiences, because
they hang in a context of uteff own' and are not dependent

over, are not the only objects of jBQCJal experience. It is not
true that our psychological objects are objects oT one subject
only as contrasted with things. If so, we could have no psycho-
logical sciences. We could never understand each other's
meanings or their relations. The fact is that we can share
each other's images, concepts, and even emotions, and will
attitudes, as truly as our sense facts. The oldest sciences
man created were sciences of meaning, such as logic, geometry,
and ethics. Lt js absurd, then, to say that mental facts exist
for one subject only — are private and unique. It is not their
social character which distinguishes things from meanings,
f C^esides social agreement, we must add, therefore, sensible

mtinuity as characteristic ol^ou^&gjSfil^OhiPgS- Things

are the cfl^^Vo~0T^rJir^or|fa pf pni.pr>0op T'Vv ^flV° B, CBT-

tain "liveliness" that our meanings as such, however social,
do not ordinarily have. > They are energies which__we_must
recognize as belonging jjjfl^jflftffi fiflptelLflLifihpir ftwi. with
their own~sTeadiness and order, independent of our meanings.
Itjsjiot that weA either in our individual or our social capacity,
do acknowledge things, which makes things objective, but that
we wms^cjflipjdfidfi^-ib««%» and that we must acknowledge
them as having such a sensible character, such motion, such
use in the realization of our specific purposes. Our ideas must
terminate in the sensible things in order to be valid. We may
select them in our service, we may spread them out into our
classificatory schemes, we may symbolize their relations by
our equations ; tbut we can-do so.successfully only by respect-
ing their own character and relations as revealed in experience.
We must believe, moreover, that the substance of things is
precisely what we must take it as in "experience. If radium
breaks down and changes into helium, no assumption of inert
matter, no postulate of substance, can guarantee its identity.
The only ke}r we have to reality is what reality must be taken
as in the progressive realization of the purposes of human
nature.

CHAPTER V

KNOWING THINGS

IN dealing with things as known, we place ourselves at once
at the pragmatic point of view — things as they must be
fofeen in our Bvetematip^exi^erienoe. IS other words, we tfy
to unlock the reality of things by means of their qualities, as
we must adjust ourselves to them:"" This' pragmatic way of
taking things has at least the advantage of convenience. It
is the only approach, whether it is the whole truth or not.
And by qualities we mean the constant andjiescribable ways

• 1*1 ^JtNflCW^***** i ^~ a0ai^)Ji6inirrr'J"~*""M*^ — flHiV

>H^which^w^jnjisjA^ake nature in its concrete. contexts. They
are differentiated and made significant through the specific
conduct which we must adopt in varying situations, — sen-
sory, chemical, electrical, etc. They are diverse or homogeneous
just in so far as we must take them as such.

We must distinguish the relation of a thing to its qualities
from other forms of diversity and unity.1 We must' "nut-con-
fuse qualities with logical consequences, which exist only as
part of a cognitive context; nor must we confuse qualities
with the species of a genus, for the qualities^cannot .be^regarded
as existing individually apart from their Complex. :We can-
not regard the qualities as effects of the thing, because Ihe
thing apart from the qualities is a mere abstraction. We
cannot regard the qualities as external parts of a whole, be-
cause the qualities only exist as interpenetrating in one dynamic
context. The thing is not the sum of ~our: abstractions, such as
independent qualities would have to be. ; Nor are the qualities.
as sometimes stated, the behavior of the thing; they must

1 See in this connection a suggestive monograph, "Om Egenskapen," by a
Swedish philosopher, Pontus Wikner, whom I count as one of the noblest
thinkers of my native land.

74

KNOWING THINGS 75

«m frfjiave under definite conditions as
well aa ita actual bebayior. They areuiot.ihe..beiiavior ift TJJ5

abstract, but what a thing must be taken as, or acknowledged,
in its specific conduct. K&ialitiesare not inert ideas, as Berkeley
supposes, but energies that can be tapped under definite con-
ditiojqs.
v Dualities are not merely the actual, but. fllfiffi t

energies of things, their possible differences_to_ other contexts.

len we see the diarnTmo^^xpecMi also to cut glass, though
the visual qualities do not cut glass. Where the conception of
quality becomes particularly significant is just in connection
with the potential behavior of the thing — whnfl ft. can do in
other contexts. If all the reactions of the thing were exhausted
in ~the~ ofce dynamic situation, if the qualities cohered in one
simultaneoiis-iftseparable blend, we should not have occasion
to deal with them. We should always deal with such a world
as consisting of concrete units.

The theory that consciousness is pjerspicuous, and does not
alter the qualities intuited, is true enough, if you mean by
consciousness the bare character of awareness. But this does
not mean that qualitie^ a^g^s^tic entities, to be intuited in
the abstract, as the old dogmatic realism, which has had a
recent revival, supposes. To regard qualities as abstract in-
tuitions is equivalent to holding that energies can be intuited
as at work, when they are not at work. While we can abstract
our awareness from the energetic continuities, sensory or extra-
organic, that does not save us the trouble of taking account of
these specific continuities and giving a definite description of
them. This is precisely the task of science. While all quali-
ties are not dependent for their existence upon our sense con-
tinuities, as we shall show later, we have no way of intuiting
the qualities of things, except by our awareness of such sense
continuities. - Thi.Qgs.by themselves i hayejip "fQBFftk3- They
cannot even be conceived as having existence, as this is a
dynamic relation — the difference which a fact makes to a con-
text, including in the case of perception the context of our sense
energies. And. qualities without con%CTts~iare . A..fl£aginat-ic
contradiction. They are Differences winch make no difference
— non-entities. All that realism can insist upon is that our

76 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

taking account of the qualities — their figuring in our cognitive
context — does not constitute them. And with this probably
no one now disagrees.

'-•'As a thinfc may exist in several contexts at the same time, we
come to conceive it as having simultaneous as well as sijfiflpsgivp
diversity of qualities. Thus a bit of honey may exist in a num-
ber "of sensory contexts at once. We see it, touch it, taste it,
smell it at the same time. The honey in the meantime is
undergoing certain physical and chemical changes independent
of the sensory contexts. And so long as this diversity can be
attended to at once — fulfills one interest — we do not regard
it as fatal to the unity of the thing.

' That ja thing may have different qualities in different con-
texts, simultaneous or successive, not only is not contradictory
but is conTmualTy^Verified by experience.1 The difference
may be in different sense contexts, when different senses ac-
quaint me simultaneously with the same thing. But the same
thing may have simultaneously different qualities within the
same sense domain for different observers. Thus it may appear
circular to one observer and elliptical to another. ^It_is_faoth
circular and elliptical at the same time, but not in the same
context, and hence there is no logical contradiction. That
we perhaps select the circular shape as our standard is' purely
a matter of convenience. Quality means preciffilv thq poa^blfi
rp.a.p,tinn of g. thing- jp Mlgh and such a context. ^

Is the thing its qualities? In the first~place,^ii we strip the
thing of its" qualities, of its possible reactions, what is left is
zero — position without content. To try to conceive a surd
or core as remaining becomes self-contradictory. When we
try to make clear to ourselves what we mean by such a core,
we find that it is a certain group of qualities, the conditions
for the appearance of which are more constant in our experience
than those of the rest. Thus the conditions for the touch-
motor qualities are simpler and more often repeated than
those for the visual qualities. The conditions for such physical
qualities as gravity and heat conduction must be conceived as
still more universal. Owing to the law of habit, the qualities

1 Mr. C. D. Broad, Mind, July, 1912, p. 458, in criticizing my position thinks
that we have here a contradiction, but he takes qualities as abstract.

KNOWING THINGS 77

whose conditions are more constant become the standard of
reference for those whose conditions are more intermittent.
They come to constitute for us the substance of the thing.
No other intelligible meaning can be given to the conception
of substrate, if qualities are the ways a thing must be taken in
its conduct. There can be nothing in the thing not capable,
theoretically at least, ~of being shown in its conduct. That
it is one thing, and not a mere sum of discrete qualities, is it-
self one of the ways in which we must take a thing. .It is
because qualities can be taken as interpenetrating in one space,
"Ss i 'fulfilling one purpose, that we speak of one thing. This,
however, does not preclude us from being interested, in other
connections, in the diversity of ways in which a thing can be
taken. No mere mystical coalescence on the part of our states
of consciousness would destroy the diversity of functions on the

art of a thing.

you identify a thing with its qualities, in the second place,
you must be careful to include all the possible ways of taking a
thing. The ways in which things can be taken not only con-
nect them with our sensory contexts, but also with other con-
texts, independent of our perception. Their relation to these
contexts may, for some purposes, be more important than the
relation to sense. We must learn to take the thing at its face
value, as the various ways in which it proves itself in its variety
of contexts, without inventing hidden essences, on the one
Tiand, or making abstract entities of our ways of taking things,
on the other.

i<Poes human nature create the qualities of thinjja? It is
true that some qualities, involving a high degree of physiological
organization, are only present for the perception of man and
the higher animals, as in the case of color. Our perceptual
qualities in general do, of course, involve a relation to the
organism. But this relation is not constituted by the cognitive
meaning. j>The perceptual qualities are just as independent of
the cognitive context,. JkS._tbe...jchemical. It is true, further,
that we "have nercgptiifl.1 ij[\iaifffis. But this is due to no "fak-
ing" of qualities, but to the fact that qualities can only be
known through the machinery of complication and association.
As some qualities may be common to different contexts, it is

78 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

possible that the sensed qualities may suggest the wrong system
of associates at any one time, either as the result of habit or
from the momentary set of attention. Further experience
shows in such a case that the supplementary qualities thus
suggested do not coexist with the sensed qualities in the par-
ticular thing. But this is a problem in our knowing of the
qualities and does not concern their reality or objective co-
existence.

kA. good deal has been made of late of so-called physical
illusions, such as the apparent bend of the stick when seen
hi water. What has been neglected here is that in suclTcases
we have to do with & complex, and noT witn a simple, physical
reaction. The apparent bend of the stick in ihe water is due

not to the direct action oflight upon the stick b
ical pfU^Kjl'lMj of water. Ji nese properties, therefore, must be
allowed for, as Ifi&y actually are both in physics and in prac-
tical experience. Even the savage, in spearing fish in the
water, learned to allow for the refraction of the medium or
he would not have secured any fish. We select the apparent
shape of the stick in the medium of the air as standard, first,
because, even before we had discovered any such medium as
air, the visual properties and the tactual properties under such
conditions are found to lead to the same practical results;
and, secondly, because, after discovering air, we find that its
action can here be ignored for practical purposes. There is
no more illusion here than in the case of the varieties of visual
shapes and sizes at various angles of seeing. These are real
physical qualities. It is convenient, however, in such cases to
standardize our visual qualities in terms of our tactual, and
so we ignore the other "appearances" for ordinary purposes.
But such standardization is not a question of reality, but of
social -ocm-venience. If our purpose is to draw an object in
a certain perspective, it is precisely the apparent properties
which become essential.

-As regards our perceptions of distant objects in space, such
as the stars which appear to our senses, here, too, the difficulty
disappears when, in the manner of science, we. take account of
the whole situation. The problem in this case is complicated
by the time aspect of the situation. We have no guarantee,

KNOWING THINGS 79

it is true, that the star which we perceive continues to exist,
in its own spatial context, as we perceive it. But if we qualify
the perception by its space and time conditions, we have a
right to say that the object is such as the telescope and spectro-
scope reveal it to us.

Again, if jour senses were different — if they were grosser
than they are now 6r~iF~tney were microscopic — the structure
of things would no. doubt appear otherwise than it does. Blood
seen through a powerful microscope is not the red juice our
bare senses reveal to us. It consists only in small part of
colored corpuscles. But we must remember that we are here
dealing with a different context of reactions. It is still true
that blood is the kind of thing which we can take as reddish in
our ordinary sense context. The grosser reaction of the thing
is as true as the minuter. In each case the properties are
indisputable so long as we specify" the -context. The mass
reactions are as true as the atomic reactions revealed to the
delicate instruments of Rutherford. In_any case, we must
tjg,ke thgjthing as ™° fir>r> j* in til ft p"ftftifiy nontext ol our ex-
perience.

That we do not know all the properties of things, owing to
the limitation of our finite instruments — our senses and our
artificial instruments — and owing to the indefinite number of
possible situations, must be admitted. This means relative
agnosticism; and to this, all honest science must subscribe.
Yet we may still maintain that our knowledge is of the real,
so far as it goes; that it approximates reality in our system-
atic effort for truth, and does not lie in another dimension from
the object which we attempt to know. The unknown is con-
tinuous with and interpenetrates the known; and however
far we may be from knowing all the properties of things in
their possible contexts, yet the thing can be taken as having
thquproperties we do know. Human nature as cognitive docs
not ' create qualities, though it is an indispensable condition
for their significance.

uThat observed qualities an^ rplalinna are not ^validated bv
our ignorance of the rest qf flu* nnnlitjflfl |fl |**»lfnf|ilTlY jllngfara-ted
in the liisfrpy nf tihfi rltoYffl"*^™Anp^g There has been, espe-
cially since the discovery of radioactive elements, a pretty

80 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

complete overhauling of our conceptual models of physics and
chemistry; yet not one empirical formula based upon accu-
rately observed properties has had to be revised. The same is
true of the observational and experimental work in the biological
sciences where new discoveries have proved no less revolution-
ary. The immense amount of classificatory work done in
those sciences before Darwin remained undisturbed by the
Darwinian theory. The discovery of new properties and laws
has not vitiated our past facts. It has only vitiated some of
our speculative assumptions.

Absolute agnosticism, on the other hand, has always main-
tained that, even though our research were complete as regards
the seeming nature of things, yet we would be as far from
knowing the real things as ever. It insists that the thing is
something different from its apparent qualities, were they all
known. It is difficult to understand the mental attitude
implied in this position. If it means conceiving a thing apart
from its properties, then what is left is zero, and there is nothing
mysterious or unknowable about zero. If, on the other hand, it
means that the thing-in-itself does have properties, but that
these are different from those which we perceive ; that human
nature has created the qualities as we have them, and that the
true qualities could only be perceived by a consciousness
entirely different from our own, which seems to be Kant's
position — if such is the assumption, all we can say is that it is
entirely gratuitous and has no pragmatic value. In any case,
the only fruitful method of procedure is to assume that qualities
are sucn as we must take them in relation to our systematic
conduct, i. The agnosticism of the unconditioned, in the sense
of a reality outside the matrix of concrete relations, is a fiction
of the faculty of abstraction. We must hold, on the contrary,
tha/Lcealitv is knowq jfl fog concrete deterrmftations. And we
are ever striving to increase our knowledge of things by trying
them out in new determinate situations. It is by such experi-
ment and observation that we find the melting point and freezing
point, the resistance, the complexity, the decomposability, and
the coherence of the world as we have it.

Whether the persistence of certain ultimate units, such as
atoms or electrons, turns out to be more than fiction or not, the

KNOWING THINGS 81

reality and persistence of qualities is a sine qua non of science.
Not only can we predict that a certain set of qualities shall
make its appearance, with the Aladdin change of conditions,
but what to me is still more striking, we can predict that cer-
tain identical qualities shall persist, as a set, through the protean
transmutation of things, with their characteristic energies.

Such is the case in chemistry with salts in the wider sense,
including acids and bases. To quote from Ostwald: "Salts
are, therefore, characterized by the fact that in solution their
components give individual reactions which are in each case
independent of the other component present in the salt. And
this relation is a reciprocal one; the second component also
shows its own reactions independent of the first. These
components of the salts which react independently of one an-
other are called ions." L ^Fhis persistence of qualities as
seemingly individual energies is shown even more strongly in
the case of biological heredity. The chromosome characters
of the germ cell, which are now believed to constitute an im-
portant part of the factors in the transmission of characteristics
including sex, constitute a qualitative constellation which is
constant in the particular life form, whether as regards sex or
species. MendeTs^Juw formulates in general how the " unit
characters " appear in the reproduction of individuals. " The
essential feature of Mendel's law is briefly this : hereditary
characters are usually independent units which segregate out
upon crossing, regardless oTTemporary dominance." z Mendel,

found that in crossing tall
peas and dwarf peas, tiie otisjWlllg would all tend to be tall.
This held true irrespective of the sex of the tall parent, show-
ing that the character of tallness was independent of sex.
Mendel called the character which appeared in the first gener-
ation, the dominant, and the one that was latent, the reces-
,sive~ In crossing the offspring, the progeny would consist of
.tails and dwarfs in the proportion of three to one ; but of
these tails only one proved to be pure. The other two,
when crossed, would reproduce the proportions obtained in

1 Ostwald, "Principles of Inorganic Chemistry" (1902), English translation,
p. 189.

* " Genetics," H. E. Walter, New York, 1914.

82 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

interbreeding the results of the first cross. If interbreeding
between the different strains is prevented, the tendency will
be for the original characters to assert themselves, and the
number of individuals with a blend of characters in their
germ plasm, such as obtains £in the impure tall strain, will
become reduced hi proportion to the numbers of those bearing
the original characters in pure form. In the case of crosses be-
tween certain species, the intactness of the original characters
is provided for by the sterility of the hybrid carrying the blend
of those characters, as in the case of the mule. Thus the origi-
nal characters tend to reappear intact, and the race in the
long run would tend to run pure. The problem, it is true, is
more complex than Mendel foresaw. Thus the relation of
dominant and recessive is not an invariable one. In some
cases both strains assert themselves equally hi the first gener-
ation. Moreover, it is not always possible to segregate single
characters, as Mendel supposed. Sometimes two characters are
linked and act as one. But for all that, the Mendelian conception
of unit characters is highly convenient in dealing with heredity.

The characters or qualities thus constitute the pragmatic
significance of the tiling. And if science can abstract the char-
acters or qualities so as to predict the behavior of nature in its
stages of change and complexity, things are of secondary impor-
tance. Or rather, the identity of characters is for science the
substance. Even the chemical elements have fallen into a
"natural series " on the basis of identical characters. Whether
these elements prove ultimate or not, the qualities and the
predictions based upon them remain as of prime importance
in conceptual description. We must start with qualities and
hold the individuals, as far as we can, in the net of our identities.
Concrete individuals, on the other hand, seem to come and go.
They probably never quite repeat themselves. What is
predictable are the recurrent qualities — the karma as the
Buddhists called it, in the case of moral qualities.

While this abstract view ofju^J^ga, however, is convenient
in our ignorance hi unlocking the secrets of nature, we cannot re-
gard it as metaphysically final. In reality there are not "unit
characters^" as Mendel calls recurrent qualities, but dynamic
situations hanging together by means of certain overlapping

^ ••••••••••• •^•^•WMM^nMaBMm*^.

KNOWING THINGS 83

identities. Thus it has been shown by Professor E. B. Wilson
lEaTcnroimosome characters are not sufficient by themselves
to determine heredity, but we must take account as well of the
potentials of the protoplasmic context in which they exist,
though of course this would not prevent our having predict-
ability by taking account of the chromosome characters alone, the
protoplasmic conditions remaining practically the same. The
whole concreteness of the situation is not necessary for predic-
tion. If it were, we could not have science. For ethical and
aesthetic purposes, again, the individuals, whether transient
or permanent, may have final and eternal significance.
/^finally, the fundamental lawof the thing, as of the self, is
This is tn^Dnlya priori law of substance,
less the mind were so constituted as to locate in each other's
space those qualities which fulfill one interest, figure in one
attention act, there could be no such process as learning by
experience. Suppose that Bergson were right that the funda-
mental law of the material world is juxtaposition, side-by-
sideness of images, the spatial spreading out of impressions
like the record of the cinematograph or of the plate of the
gyroscope. In such a world we should have hopeless chaos.
Such unities as things could never arise in perception and
consequently there could be no practical adjustment to our
world. The intellect would be a useless instrument at best,
an anomaly in such a world. What is exclusive is the old
mechanical model of atoms which is fast breaking down.
What is absolutely fixed are our mathematical symbols. Fixity
.in the world-as-experienced is a relative and approximate
affair, not something we can take for granted. What has been
emphasized by the electrical conception is precisely this inter-
penetration of energies in the so-called atom, the durcheinander,
and not the juxtaposition of qualities. The ator"« Tnimfr fo-
conceived, not as impenetrable entities, but_jas_more_or^Jess
stable dynamic clusters within dynamic JS3SSi6mS' Even the
negative electric charge, if it should turn out to be a final
entity, exists primarily in interpenetration with other elements.
At any rate this conception, whether its symbolism is final or
not, has taught us that ^nprgAtip i"t|firpfinfitratinn gnf*
lapping fthflrflM.prjze the ultimate constitution of ou^ world.

84 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

If we speak of interpenetration as an a priori law of our
perception, we do not mean it is an arbitrary law. Mind,
in its long survival history, has been shaped on things. This
is what makes it practical. The law of interpenetration is
convenient just because it enables us .tgjneejfjtEe actual world
as ascertained by experiment and as fulfilling the requirements
for action.

n

Having now defined in general the nature of qualities, I wish
to say a word about the problem of their relative importance.
The distinction between primary and, j5econdary7flualities is an
ancient one. There have been several reasons for making some
qualities more important than others. One reason offered
in the past is fhQjhaoflSjof_intuition . The primary qualities
are suppposed to be immediately intuited, according to such
writers as Thomas Reid, while the sproi^flrv nua.1i|jej;i are
supposed to be due to our sense reactions. To use Reid's own
language, "Our senses give us a (lim-t and distinct notion of
the primary qualities, and inform us what they are in them-
selves : but of the secondary qualities, our senses give us only
a relative and obscure notion. They inform us only that they
are qualities which affect us in a certain manner." * According
4/othis theory the _primarx^ualities would be not only copies
buTltteptical with reality, while secondary qualities are only
ways in which the primary qualifies affect our sensibilities.
Thomas Brown, however, already recognized that there is no
essential difference between qualities so far as the mode of
perception goes. "I cannot discover anything in the sensations
themselves, corresponding with the primary and secondary
qualities, which is direct, as Dr. Reid says, in one case and rela-
tive in the other. All arc relative in his sense." 2 They are all
alike in being reactions of our organism upon the selected stimuli.
Nor is there anylEing inherently depraved about sense that
would make qualities subjective or unreal, just because they
are sensed.

Again, qualities that are perceived by means of a number

1 " On the Intellectual Powers," Essay II, § 17.

1 " Lectures on the Philosophy of the Human Mind," 1828, pp. 253 f.

KNOWING THINGS 85

of senses have been thought to have a superior reality to those
perceived only through .one sense. Thus form, size, position,
and motion are perceived by sight and touch alike. But solid-
ity, which has figured as one of the most important of the
primary qualities, can only be had by means of the sense of
active touch. So perception by a number of senses cannot
be alLjmportant.

tit has been argued again thaTrnie more generic, sp.nsp gnoii'f^
are more real than the more specific ones. Because the generic
sense qualities lend themselves best to mathematical descrip-
tion, it has been supposed that they come nearest to giving us
the reality of nature. Secondary qualities on the whole are
due to greater specialization of our sense organs and have
seemed to be more subjective. But it is a fact that some of the
generic qualities do not seem to figure high in the scale of in-
formation. Thus pain and temperature are among the most
generic of our sense qualities, but they have not been recognized
as belonging to the primary list. Because the conditions for
the manifestation of the qualities are complex, it does not
follow that the qualities are less real. The conditions for the
making available of electrical properties are exceedingly com-
plex, but we do not on that account doubt the reality of elec-
tricity.,^

^Again,f qualities have been deemed subjective or objective
according to their clearness or diaiingtn^|Ltn t.hA aWnrinp
The pQmary qualities, according to^t)escarteg} are clear and
distinct, while the sp.ftnndfl.ry gn^.]]'!,^ fl.rA ^Ifj, ti^-hftnBflflfi1*"^-
But according to this, color and tone would rank at the head
of the list, because there we can distinguish more qualities
and arrange them in a serial order with greater success than we
can in the other senses. This is especially true of color, where
the largest range of qualitative discrimination and arrangement
is possible ; but neither color nor tone was included in the old
list of primary qualities, though they permit of the greatest
analysis. /

•JVIore convincing is the argument based on their value for
prediction^ The primary . qnalitifis, according to Locke, are
constant and insep_arable while the secondary^ qualities ^vary\
While this is true, to a certain extent, "shape, extension, and

86 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

weight cannot be regarded as invariably present in the physical
objects with which we must deal. ; We cannot speak of electric-
ity, for example, as having either shape, extension,, or weight.
These qualities, therefore, cannot be regarded as universal, as
Locke would have us think. On the other hand, the qualities
just mentioned are only constant when conditions are the same.
In this respect, therefore, they have no particular advantage
over the so-called secondary qualities, v Mass varies with
temperature and with pressure, and it has been shown recently
to vary with velocity. Velocity approaching that of light has
been found to increase the apparent mass. But that qualities
differ under different conditions certainly does not indicate
any subjectivity. If so, we would have to conclude with
Berkeley that all qualities are subjective. Constancy for
science always means repetition under determinate conditions.

One reason for the distinction between primary and secondary
qualities has doubtless been- tne confusion between qualities
and values. The so-called secondary qualities have^jzfienj
rejected in part, no doubt, because of their affective tone. This
affective tone is especially prominent in connection with such
qualities as those of taste or smell. But Aristotle, long ago,
pointed out that touch may be the most sensuous of the senses,
and therefore carry the most violent organic tone. We would,
therefore, have to reject touch as well as taste. In fact, we
would have to reject most of our sense qualities.
''Evidently, one difficulty in making up the classical primary
list, which for the most part remains approved, was the lack of
scientific knowledge. Thus the old list fails to include weight,
which has since come to be regarded as one of the most important
of the descriptive_qualities. i The old theory of primary quali-
ties, moreover, presupposes the impact theory of physical
changes, and so emphasizes extensive mass as fundamental
and universal. This will have to be reviseoTIn theTTght of
our more recent knowledge of electricity and radioactivity.
Such energies have brought to light a whole list of descriptive
properties which were unthought of in the old catalogue.
Certainly, impact would be far too gross a method of describing
these reactions.

Whatever basis we can find for distinction, as to the impor-

•••Wi"*'*

KNOWING THINGS 87

tance of qualities, it is clear that any such basis must be
*nfflrabsolute. tit is relative to the purpose in diu-stion. What is
primary for one purpose may be quite secondary for another
plirpof"* Thus the importance of the mechanical qualities Is
quite secondary for aesthetic purposes, while color and tone
become of very great importance. ^Qualities must be considered
as objective, if theft fiflflfrfe MS to identify and medict the things
with which we must deal. And in this the so-called secondary
qualities may be fully as important as the so-called primary.
Locke himself, in giving us the description of gold, does not fail
to mention its yellowness. In the identification of a gas, the
odor may be of the greatest importance. In identifying a solu-
tion, as a saline solution, the sense of taste may be worth
all the rest. '• Qualities are objective just in so far as we must
take them as objective. If they do not help us to identify an
object, they can no longer be called qualities. They must be
reckoiiedjm the_sidejQf value.
I gome qualities can be taken as

reaction of the human ofganisin^- though T ocourse tnev must
make a difference to the context of perception, too, in order to
be known. This, however, is secondary in importance to their
reactions in other contexts. Thus, we have more confidence in
weight as determined by the mechanical scales than when indi-
cated by our sensory quality of strain. For the purpose of
science we must determine our conduct with reference to weight
as fixed by scales. In determining temperature we place more
reliance on the thermometer than on the sensory differences of
hot and cold. And so in regard to size, we have more confidence
in size as determined by certain standard measures which are
kept under artificial conditions than we have when we depend
on sensory qualities. ^ We must talcR snmp qualities ^ PY1'g*iing
in contexts of their own, independent of the-OiganiaiQ- This

what ^ggmypn riaq fri

qualities, and what makes Locke speak of these as archetypes
which we "copy, though even from this point of view there is
not complete consistency, as can be seen in the case of heat and
weight, which do not occur in Locke's primary list. The rela-
tion, however, is not that of copying. In fact, cognitively,
the sensory differences would necessarily come first. The

88 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

relation is rather that we can take the qualities which are sensed
as identical with the qualities in other contexts, for example,
that of the scales.

Such qualities as color or taste, on the other hand, must be
taken as requiring specialized organic conditions. While the
light waves have qualities in other contexts, such as revealed by
the camera film and various pigments, these are not the qualities
of the sensible context of color, vlt does not at all follow,
however, that because some qualities can only exist in the
specialized context of certain sense organs that they are there-
fore subjective. Because we can only get water under the
condition of H2O, it does not follow that water is subjective.
The context of our retina, with its rods and cones, in connection
with light rays, is just as real a context and just as independent
of our will as that of any other chemical or physical reactions.

The_re_is only one meaning, so far as I can see, in which we
could speak of subjective qualities. And that is, if we speak
of having qualities as itself a quality. Thus some would say
that the sky has the quality of having the quality, blue. In
this case we can easily suppose an infinite series, because the
quality of having qualities can be repeated on itself any number
of times that imagination chooses to conjure. Obviously this
is a purely subjective process — a creation of intellectual
abstraction. It does not add anything to the existence of
qualities.

Any quality may be treated as a sign or secondary to other
qualities for .the specific purpose in question. Thus visual
qualities may be treated as secondary to tactual and these again
to chemical, when the purpose is the satisfaction of hunger.
But for the purpose of enjoying a painting or reading a book,
the tactual qualities become signs or secondary, for the normal
person, to the visual. In space perception, touch may serve
to call up a sight map and this in turn to suggest motor sensa-
tions.

In any case, wJien. we are dealing with qualities we are not
concerned with the relation of a thing to consciousness, but with
its relation to a determinate energetic context, whether that be
physiological or physical. Qualities are certain permanent ex-
pectancies which we can have with reference to things under

KNOWING THINGS 89

definite conditions. The purpose in question, whether mechan-
ical '<MP 60WWnil(i 'or aesthetic, must decide the importance of the

giia.1it.ipH RCf fay ffr til**. part.imilfl.r p.nnf.PYf. ia oonfiprjori

quaHtigs, in so far as they are qualities, mi

Their acknowledgment is a forced acknowledgment.

Ill

inhere has been a tendency ever since Berkeley to confuse

sensations and sense qualities, and on account of this confusion
to insist upon the subjective character of the sense qualities
and all qualities. Now, it is quite true that, in order to become
significant, qualities must become a part of the context of our
cognitive experience; but this does not prove that qualities
have no other status than that of experience. Berkeley, we
all admit, is wrong in supposing that, in knowing the qualities,
the observer, whether human or superhuman, creates them.
. Qualities, we have seen, have their own energetic contexts,
whether in relation to our organism or independent of it. We
must take account of the changes of nature, its growth and decay,
quite irrespective of whether we are conscious of it or not.
Berkeley, on the other hand, truly states the relation of qualities
to our cognitive attitudes. "To explain the phenomena is
all one as to show why, upon such and such occasions, we are
affected with such and such ideas." * But he is not warranted
on that account in saying that the qualities are nothing but
ideas. This is confusing the causa cognoscendi, or the reason
for our knowing, with the causa essendi, or the reason for exist-
ence.

; Taking a content as a quality, moreover, anrj| tft^""g it as a
pure sensation are two entirely different attitudes. Taking it

^HMHMA^MMMMHn^MMB^MaMMMMa^|HHBHHBMMBBBMMi|MHlMMMHBBJp "• ' "" "•" "" "

as a sensation means the bare awareness for a subjective inter-
est, without relation to an objective context, while taking it as a
quality means taking it as a part of a specific context, fulfilling
a purpose. Taking yellow as a sensation or having a yellow
consciousness is a different attitude from yellow as a quality,
as in recognizing gold as yellow. Whether there ever exists in
experience a pure sensation, we will not argue here, but the
logical distinction is none the less clear. The reference or

1 "Principles of Human. Knowledge," § 50.

90 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

attitude is quite different in the two cases. We can never
say, therefore, that our sensations constitute the thing. Calling
them sensations already indicates that they are taken in the
context of a subjective interest, apart from the context of things.
What is objectivq is ffifi BBflfiiMf q"«-Hi-.ipg — the qualities as
perceived and as they must be taken again under similar condi-
tions. A sense quality is not a pure.. sensation, but conditions
the selective interest and remains independent of its variations.
Things are never merely sensed. Qualities are qualifications
of a certain interest in the world as sensed. Thus we qualify
our interest in the thing, chair, by the way it appears to the
touch and the way it appears to sight, and to various other
senses. We never make the mistake of eating or clothing
ourselves with sensations, but we deal with things as sensed.
Part, at least, of Berkeley's convincingness lies in his playing
between things as perceptions and things as perceived.

Furthermore, sensations persist after the sensible continuities,
which make us attribute them to things, no longer exist. This
can be seen in complication — the sensory revival, which gives
us the concrete perceptual object, on the reestablishing of
sensible continuity ; in illusion, where the wrong sensory com-
plex is stimulated; or in hallucination, where the sensory
context is intraorganically reexcited. In all these cases of
the revival of sensory elements, we must distinguish between
their existence as subjective states and their being taken as
qualities of things. Sensations can be taken as qualities only
in so far as they are actually or signify sensible continuities.
As such sensible continuities they can be taken twice, i.e. as
figuring as part of the sensed object and as figuring in the con-
text of our interest. But it is the identical quality which
figures in the two contexts. To the sensations, as persisting
as sensory elements after the stimulus, we may apply Professor
Stout's term of "psychic existents." But this merely signifies
that they have a locus within the context of interest. They
still remain physical facts. And, in perceptual assimilation, they
still figure as qualities of the thing. The ice looks cold and hard.
. Some sensations are not normally taken as sense qualities.
. Some sensations, for example, inform us, not of qualities
primarily, but of relations. Thus, the joint sensations, the

KNOWING THINGS 91

sensations of the semicircular canals, the sensations of con-
traction and expansion of muscles and tendons, though they
contribute a great deal to our consciousness of space relations,
do not ordinarily inform us about any new qualities of the
things involved. Other sensations, again, like the organic
sensations in the more specific sense, such as hunger, thirst,
sex, nausea are so vague and so fused with the feelings that they
do not inform us about the objects, but about the way in which
the objects affect the welfare of our organism. They, there-
fore, come to enter as a part of our sense of value, instead of
being taken as qualities of the thing. It seems, however,
that the organic sensations do contribute a certain coefficient
of existence, in the sense of presence, which may be regarded as
qualifying the object. In such sensations as those of taste or
smell, the accompanying affective tone seems the more impor-
tant part of the situation.

Again, it is_ indifferent to some qualities that they may be
sensed. Of these, the sense qualities may be regarded as signs.
The reality of such qualities we take to be their existence in the
extra-organic context. Our consciousness or perception of the
explosion does not make the explosion occur, though it indicates
the connection of the explosion with our sensible experience
and^so makes it significant to us. \The knife in the drawer
grows rusty and loses its sharpness, though we have not per-
ceived it in the meantime. The chemical changes in such cases
must be interpolated by ourselves, when we establish sensible
continuity with the thing. Our physical instruments are often
far more sensitive to certain changes than our gross senses.
Where the senses, even when equipped with telescopes, fail
to see stars, the more sensitive film of the camera still records
them and makes it possible for us to count them. A large
part of the qualities of nature we must take account of in this
a posteriori fashion. Our taking account of the coexistence of
qualities does not make either the coexistence or the qualities.
The intellect, while a coupling agency, fulfills its function, not
when it couples arbitrarily, as Kant would have us believe,
for then we have illusions, but when it couples in such a way
that our conjunctions tally with the conjunctions of qualities
as ascertained through experience.

\

CHAPTER VI

KNOWING THINGS (Continued)
Things and Relations

THE problem of relations is one of the most controversial
in the history of thought. It will be impossible here to enter
into these controversies in detail. We shall touch on them
only in so far as they throw light upon the exposition of the
problem itself. And in this exposition we must limit ourselves
to a few fundamental considerations. At the very outset we
are struck by the fact that the status of relations is a matter of
considerable confusion. Those who start with the conception
of a heterogeneous manifold, whether sensations or physical
elements, naturally look upon relations as accidental. . It has
been held by some, notably Kant and Herbart^ that relations
are subjective additions to our world. : We are supposed to
start with simple sensations or simple qualities ; and the mind
is supposed to synthesize these by means of certain categories
of its own such as space, time, and causality. Now it is true
that, in our weaving the facts of experience into our appercep-
tive systems, certain subjective elements enter in. Our space
orientations are made, first of all, with reference to our organ-
ism, as the center of its world. Nearer and farther, right and
left, up and down, have their basis in the kinsesthetic sensations
of the organism and its adjustments to meet its individual needs.
Our consciousness of the immediate duration of intervals de-
pends, for shorter intervals, upon certain sensations of atten-
tion strain, and, for longer intervals, upon certain rhythmic
organic functions such as digestion. Our indirect dating of
events as before or after is likewise due in the first instance to
our subjective interest which arranges events in a personal
series. Our number consciousness, in like manner, has its

92

KNOWING THINGS 93

start in certain subjective processes of counting and thus
bringing objects, which are perhaps innocent of any number
order, into an order of our own, as first, second, third, etc.
^g^usality mgaflg, hi the first instance, a certain consciousness
of control over our bodily movements and 'iJn'e manipulation
of external things throughJihem : and we naively read into the
world outside of our organism a similar type of agency. Our
qualitative series have their root in certain

practical interests. These condition the measure of our quanti-
ties and the basis of selection for our qualitative order. But
while it is true that our consciousness of relations has its start
in our subjective interests, it is not true that "these constitute
arbitrarily the relations thus taken account of. In our social
interactions, we learn to abstract from what is peculiar To ouT
personal interests and to recognize relations thai are vand lor
all of us. We construct a c"Tnmni| ly^ra r>f spatial di^a^ces,
temporal sequences, causal expectancies, numerical diversity,
fruantitaiive ana qualitative identities and differences*:1 Tim1 "
units of measurement and the starting point of our ordering
are conventional enough. But, in any case, our mental proc-
esses relate to concrete complexes in which the relations are as
real as the qualities or ensembles of qualities which we abstract"
as terms._

Instead of starting from the learning process, and regard-
ing relations as subjective because, in order to be known, they
must come to figure in the contexts of our interests, Braj^ey l
andjoiherajiave started from logical considerations to impugn
the reality of relations. Here, too, the difficulty will be found
in certain initial assumptions. If we start with abstract unre-
lated terms, we may find it difficult to furnish any cement
which will hold the terms together. By a trick ofjanguage,
Bradley, at the outset, substantiates the relations into things.
He then argues that in order for the relations to unite the terms,
they must either have something in common with the terms to
be related, or be wholly diverse from them. In the former case,
what they have in common would have to fall apart from what
is diverse. Otherwise we would have mere identity. We are
therefore left with the second horn of the dilemma ; and however

1 "Appearance and Reality," Ch. III.

94 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

we proceed in our attempted synthesis, reality must always
disintegrate into mere diversity. To take a concrete example :
if you say that the book is on the table, then the relation on
would itself have to be taken as an abstract entity, and it
would be necessary, in turn, to relate this to the table and the
book and to repeat this process indefinitely. It would follow
that the book could not possibly be conceived as being on the
table.1

To obviate this embarrassing dilemma, Jjloyce ^proposes to
accept the problem as stated by Bradley at its face value, but
to seek the solution in the concept of an infinite series. We
have no quarrel with infinite series. Tliey are creatures of
definition and no doubt exist in the world of conceptual con-
struction. The concept of infinite series signifies merely
that we can conceive collections where a part can be put into
a one-to-one correspondence with the whole. That holds
true in the logical concept of number. Our contention here is
merely that the hypothesis is irrelevant. Bradley's dilemma
would not be affected any more by an infinite than a finite
regress. It contains no law or order which points to a limit.
It can only be resolved by an examination of the initial assump-
tion which seems to be false. We are not given abstract terms
or abstract relations as the units of experience. Terms and
relations are pragmatic. They are our emphases in the Service"
of the dominant interest for the time being. The real units
of reality are neither terms nor relations, but energy systems

from which the terms and relations_are i

The relations, moreover, as we know them in
are finite relations. The series of grays which we can discrimi-
nate, in the case of our light sensations, are a definite number,
dependent upon certain psychophysical conditions. The
camera may distinguish still other shades which lie outside
the sensitiveness of our retina; but it, too, distinguishes a
definite number, conditioned by its peculiar structure. Even
in the case of infinite series, the relations upon which the law
of the series is based are finite.2 Bradley is quite right that
relations are meaningless when taken~luf~plire abstractions.

1 See James' criticism of Bradley, "Essays in Radical Empiricism," Ch. III.
» See "Truth and Reality," pp. 141-145.

KNOWING THINGS 95

What could on or in or of or between or distant or before and
after mean if they were taken as things in themselves? TJiey^
dornevertheless, have r^j^^nrn^jf taken-jmilrin their proper
systems^ The book being on the table means something dif-
ferent from its being under the table. If we would understand
further how the book can be on the table, we must take account,
not merely of the space system of relations, but of the physical
system with the properties implied. If table and book were
liquids instead of solids, it might be impossible for the book
to stay on the table. Alcohol will not stay on water; the
two mix, which, however, is not the case with oil and alcohol.
^o ay*ertftinT therefore, wfrpt.hpr cprt,fl.irt_relations are contra-
dictory to reality^ we.must investigate pnfjpirip.g.l]y t.hp. n^urf nf
the particular complex. The intellect finds nothing contradic-
tory about this procedure unless it has been debauched by a
false metaphysics. Nor is it clear why esthetics should possess
a superior type of solvency to that of science. ^Esthetic sys-
tems do, indeed, furnish a certain type of unity which can be
taken at its face value wherever realized, but this is ^9 sub-
stitute for an intelligent understanding of our world. And
aesthetic unities, too, are capable of being translated into logi-
cal terms without dirempting their aesthetic reality. For our
practical purposes, it remains true that Chicago is so many
miles west of New York ; that childhood and youth with their
unique characteristics precede maturity and old age, rather
than the opposite; that our comparisons of similarities and
differences, our causal expectancies, our quantitative and
qualitative ordering, our numerical distinctions, our syntheses
into things and persons, are relevant to the world with which
we deal. It is in this relevancy that their convenience lies
for our practical or logical procedure.

; Another__tendency goes to the opposite extreme and would
state tWnggTancT qualities entirely in terms of abstract rela-
tions. '*~lVor this type oFattitude, the terms are jxmstiiuted by
taSSelatiQiis, and their reality lies iiTbeing intersection poinra
.of relations. This attitude hearkens back to Schelling's
philosophy of identity, where subjective and objective entities
are'lfltBfSbuoa tu"'b€ equally neutral — determined purely by
their logical context. As recently stated, the_jtheory_js.-the.

96 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

outcome of a certain extreme type of intellectualism which
would deal with reality after the pattern of mathematics and
deduce its variety from a few simple postulates.1 It has
transferred the ambiguity of mathematics as regards the exist-
ence of terms to the conception of reality in general. In geome-
try it is true that we can start either with points as determining
lines, or we can start with lines as determining points. The
ambiguity here is not real so long as we make definite our initial
postulates. The terms and the relations are alike constituted
by the type of geometry which we choose to have, whether a
point geometry or a line geometry or some other kind. They
are predicative functions within the system which we select
or posit. Their simplicity and complexity are determined by
their function within the system. Thus points may be regarded
as uniquely simple when conceived as determining the direc-
tion of a line. They may be regarded as infinitely complex
when conceived as the intersection loci of an infinite num-
ber of lines. But in any case they can be conceived to exist
only within a system, as uniquely determined by its postu-
lates. No blame attaches, therefore, to geometry within its
own domain.

- Neutralism .uijnetapliysics seems to pwe^ts_plausibility to
its playing upon an ambiguity, at one tune translating entities
into relations and at another, relations into entities, without
adhering to any definite set of postulates. Whej3_ihe_igla^
tions are made the center of regard, the entities come to seem
jaeutral. Instead jof . re^jzm^.lEa£-suoh -ompbasia is pragmatic,

1 This movement, which in this country has gone under the name of "the
new realism," seems to have found its inspiration in Bertrand Russell's "The
Principles of Mathematics." It found a conflicting expression in the composite
authorship of "The New Realism, " 1912 ; but its extreme and most consistent
statement is furnished by Edwin B. Holt's "The Concept of Consciousness, "
1914. Russell's own theory, as found in his later work, Russell and White-
head's "Principia Mathematica," makes entities "predicative functiona," which,
so far as I can understand it, would be similar to the pragmatic view. R. B.
Perry, in his "Present Philosophical Tendencies," 1912, takes a compromise
position, emphasizing the externality of the cognitive relation. The concep-
tion of neutralism, which characterizes the above movement, has been greatly
influenced by William James' essays, "Does Consciousness Exist?" and "A
World of Pure Experience," first published in the Jour. Phil. Psychol. and Sd.
Meth., 1904, and since reprinted in "Essays in Radical Empiricism," 1912.
Jamea in turn had been influenced by Avenarius.

KNOWING THINGS 97

a certain partial purpose, the neutralist makes

**i flb^tafe- jHencft htT'froatula.tes a worlcfcompounded out
of neutrals with no structure or potentialities, but constituted
anlftly fry rftift+.inna Since such neutrals must be indistinguish-
able, they are regarded as simples. The fact is that they are
nothing at all. The relations have become the only reality.
The terms or substantives have been exhausted in theTelatroas^
The former are so completely internal that they cannot point
to possibilities in other contexts. Not even the grin remains of
the metaphysical cat. Or at any rate, it is supposed to be purely
a function of position. But a world compounded of neutrals
f^mild givp ui nn mnnnir" Itcould give us nothirig"at all.

in "neufi

Reality is known, not in "pgirtrM mos^if^" but in energy
systems. In each of these we must observe the unique ensemble
of properties. We must discover empirically how far certain*
characteristics of the components reappear in a new ensemble,
and how far the new ensemble has unique characteristics of its
own. The potentialities can never be said to be exhausted in
any one system. They are practically infinite in the possible
qualitative and quantitative variations of our world. It is
tljisaspect of potentiality which gives pragmatic significance
to the terms tninfl ana substance!

-Iff on the other hand. yrt» fnnp.eivf> the entities as simple and
absolute, then the relations come to seem neutral and accidental.
They can make no difference to the terms, the latter remaining
identical in all the variety of contexts. The external combina-
tion of the simples in certain numbers and density is deemed
adequate to account for the complexity of reality as we have
it. To be sure, if the terms, by hypothesis, equal zero, it is
hard to see how they could undergo any transformation in
varying combinations; and if the relations are neutral, too,
what remains out of which to build a real world with its chang-
ing variety? As over against such a world of pure abstrac-
tions, the real world seems to be one of creative synthesis and
real change. While we must approach reality by means of
abstraction in trying to predict and control its flow, this always
leaves something more, and this more constitutes the move-
ment of the process. >Wg_ cannot compound ouy Typr^ nnt- n*
abstract umversals. Universal" *\]ff edy**; handles by means

98 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

of which reason lays hold of reality, but they are only service-
able when they dip again into the concrete situations. Our,
definitions do not constitute reality. They are asymmetrical
formulae, which, while they imply and lead us to the real situa-
tions, are but meager abstracts from them.

The theory of gytftnaJ .r^M^0 has been restricted by some
to the r-rprrirnro ralfttmn .or- the relation, nof injjfifljgt. It has
been held that it makes no difference to jeaSty that it_ figures
in our mental^ systems^'The knowledge relation^ for example,
is supposed to be neutral. This attitude, again, seems to rest
on an ambiguity. If what is meant is that the cognitive
relation does not affect the physical qualities of the things,
it is in the main true. Our taking account of the gravitational
system or the combining valencies of chemical elements does
not, as such, alter these facts. This is not true, however, if
the knowledge relation has to do with the condition of our own
organism. The knowledge that we are in a critical condition
may accelerate the pulse and produce other complications.
And so we do not always inform the patient of his exact state.
If what is meant, on the other hand, is that reality would be
just the same if it were not known, we are manifestly guilty of
a false abstraction. If reality were not known, one important
relation would be lacking, viz. that of being known, with all
that it implies. /The cognitive system-ia-jttst as real as any
system. The qualification of interest is a unique qualification
which cannot be resolved into any other type of relation.
Hence this relation cannot be abstracted from, without our
subtracting from reality. It makes a real difference to reality
that it is known or appreciated.1 It is, at the same time, the
most momentous of all differences. Without the relation of
interest, reality would be stripped of the whole world of signifi-
cance, and that i*-a good deal. Back of the " new " neutralism
there lurks an antiquated metaphysics, that of abstract things

in themselves which are indifferent to contexts. 'But thingga

are what they are known-as in energy systems. Otherwise
they are intellectual abstractions and no longer real. AUcT'

1 F. C. S. Schiller, Dewey and the Chicago School have emphasized the crea-
tive contribution of the cognitive relation, but do not seem clear as to what it
contributes or rather as to what it does not contribute.

KNOWING THINGS 99

among such systems, the cognitive system as a unkuifi type of
selectjgj. reaction, figures a¥ ofteT^"

If we pass now to the types of relations, we can see again the
advantage of tRe pragmatic1 approach, 'i he tendency of the
human mind has been to emphasize some types of relations and
to ignore other types. This has been due partly to tempera-
ment, butf^till more to tradition. Thus we find that some
emphasize' st^yg^^ns to the exclusion of tra^iiitfajEia-
tjions. Whue the former type, as for example space jrelations^
has its- significance in our understanding of reality, the trans-
itive relations must not be ignored. Reality is essentially on
the whig. ^Movement, confluence, interpenetration, change
are of the very tissue of reality. To ignore such relations
means leaving a dead skeleton on our hands, instead of the
concreterie§s and glow of real life. Others, again, have empha-
sized tljJe^nalytic as over against the synthetic^relations.
They have^een obsessed by the diversitiesTiprt dJHfflmttarities
which appear in our experience. Reality for them has crumbled
into a granular mass of elements without cement ; and the task
of knowledge has become correspondingly hopeless. But in
concrete experience there are the synthetic relations, too — the
similarities, the fusions, the causal and logical implications.
And these must be taken at their face value as well as the dis-
continuities. It is not for philosophy to make a world in accord-
ance with its prejudices, but to make clear the constitution of
the world as we find it. And here the connective tissue, which
makes our world hang together, has as much claim as our
abstract terms. Both are pragmatic distinctions in the serv-
ice of our adjustments to the world of our experience. Some,
again, have been fascinated by jbhe more intimate relations^
the througji-an^-througfa relations ofTogic and aesthetics, and
they Have_ no_gatience for the more external relations. Here,
again, the emphasis is true, so far as it goes. The more intimate
relations of the logical and aesthetic types are genuinely real.
But there are some relations which seem relatively accidental
to the facts of which they take account. Not to speak of the
mechanical relations in our external world which seem alogical
to us at any rate, facts in our experience are grouped, through
our temporary interests, into mosaics of contiguities and sum-

100 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

larities, in a manner as non-logical as it is irrelevant to their
objective connections. Witness the topsy-turvy drama of our
dreams and the motley collection of items in a daily news-
paper.

^ There are certain general types of relations which furnish
nets for holding together vast masses of facts. Such are. the
°p°"Q fp^Qfi^po the time relations, the causal relations, and the
logical relations. The space relations riave to do with things
m space, their spread-outness and arrangement; they do not,
except indirectly, imply anything about space itself. We
abstract, as we have seen, from our personal perspectives of
orientation. We socialize our perceptual relations in terms of
certain artificial units of measurement, and systematize them
into certain perspectives on the basis of our Cartesian coordi-
nates. But however artificial may be our units, and however
conventional our coordinates, it is the space relations of the
real world with its pattern of parts that we mean. Again,
in mil ,t,p.mtM|raJ relations, we abstract from our individual
perspectives, witE* their dependence upon our subjective sense
of duration and our immediate individual needs. We socialize
our perspectives in terms of certain standard units, based upon
objective periodicities, such as the earth-clock or sidereal move-
ments. Here, again, our units of measurement are pragmatic,
and our spatializing of temporal sequences into one dimension
is artificial. But what we mean is a stream of real change and
real CQ.n&tancy with its nexus of causal and sigmSclmt depend-
ence, where we can, in a measure, orient ourselves to the pres-
ent and future on the basis of the recurrences which we read in
the past.

The^concept ef -causality^ comes down to us from past tradi-
tion laden with many ambiguities and contradictions. The
so called cause-and-effect relation has been regarded by some
as a relation of identity or a symmetrical relation. Like all
a priori statements, this needs to be scrutinized. It does not
seem that the effect need necessarily be identical in kind and
quantity with the conditions called the cause. That seems,
indeed, to be true in mechanical series, disregarding the loss
of energy which is dissipated as heat. In the case of chemical
changes, on the other hand, new properties may appear in the

KNOWING THINGS 101

compound which could not have been predicted analytically
from the components taken separately. Electrical changes,
again, may give rise to molecular motion or chemical decom-
position, as well as to further electromagnetic changes. Chemi-
cal changes seem to give rise to neural changes, and neural
changes to mental processes ; and yet it does not seem necessary
to suppose that breadstuff is mind stuff.
k'jhit we can no more assume that cause and effect must be
identical in space and in time than in kind. Wherever we
have action conditioned bv distance, there must also be a
difference in the time of the action and the reaction. No
intelligible conception of energy has been able to avoid a cer-
tain spatial discreteness of centers. Any medium invented
in the service of a block continuity must in turn break up into
discrete impulses in order to account for our actual world.
Let us leave out of consideration the fictitious ether; for, in
the words of Poincare, "if it is able to explain everything, this
is because it does not enable us to decide between the differ-
ent hypotheses, since it explains everything beforehand. It
therefore becomes useless." 1 Take for instance, the transmis-
sion of a charge from one electron to another. "The perturba-
tion is propagated with a finite velocity ; it, therefore, reaches
the second electron only when the first has long ago entered
upon its rest. This second electron, therefore, will undergo,
after delay, the action of the first, but will certainly at that
moment not react upon it, since around this first electron
nothing any longer budges." 2 To use a more concrete illus-
tration from the same author, take a Hertzian oscillator such
as is used in wireless telegraphy: "If all the energy issuing
from our oscillator falls on the receiver, this will act as if it
had received a mechanical shock, which will represent in a sense
the compensation of the oscillator's recoil ; the receiver will
move on, but not at the moment when the oscillator recoils.
If the energy propagates itself indefinitely without encounter-
ing a receiver, the compensation will never occur." One
thingjseems certain : the question of the cause and effect rela-
tion can no longer be setEIeo! a prton, ImL 111114 I>M

1 Popular Science Monthly, Vol. LXX, p. 348.
* Ibid. p. 347.

102 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

experimental evidence. tTosay that the caupp

with the effect is as unscientific as that^ the heavenly bodies

must move in circles because these are the most perfect figures ;
or that the universe must be a sphere for the same reason.

cannot say a priori whether a certain causal series is re-

^

)le !_ or irreversible. fr In physical science the general
tion is that cnanges, except for the dissipation of energy, are
reversible. This holds in mechanics. It also holds in chem-
ical transformations where the assumption is that no number
of step-compounds will affect the final constitution of the com-
pound in question, vln organic and psychological series we
are not able to predict such reversibility. Again, as regards
the continuity of the causal series, we cannot read off the steps
of the series from the characteristics of the initial situation.
We must plot our curves empirically on the basis of the changes
as observed. Even in the case of mechanical motion, it has
been shown that particles moving with a velocity approximat-
ing that of light, suddenly acquire an increase of mass. In
the compression of gases, the curve is constant for a certain
range when a discontinuity appears, due to the atomic struc-
ture. And so in the compression of solids. It has been shown
that metals at a temperature approximating absolute zero,
change in conductivity, the latter becoming here well-nigh
absolute. Our theories of specific changes, therefore, must
be based upon the constitution of reality as actually observed.
On account of the difficulties inherent in metaphysical causa-
tion, some have treated causality as a purely phenomenal
affair, based upon the fact of recurrence of perceptions in our
experience, and the habits of expectancy produced in us.
According to Hume., all that we observe is a series of discrete
events having no other connection, of which we can take account
ait any rate, than psychological association. But obviously
the changes and constancies which we observe in our experience
must have a basis in the actual facts themselves ; else the causal
predictions would not be relevant to the world with which we
must deal. While Hume considers single beadlike events,
and can discover no stamp of necessary connection upon them,
it has been suggested that the causal relation must beduadic,,
i.e. we must take account of two events in the sequence, in

KNOWING THINGS 103

order to determine the series.1 Others, _again, have suggested
that, since we must take account of two events and their rela-
tion, the causal series is a triadic affair. In neither case do we
escape from Hume's phenomenalism. At best, the concept
of causality as it has come down to us, is unsatisfactory as an
explanatory concept. While it is true that it takes time for
certain changes to take place, it is not the aspect of a series
of moments or positions which is significant for understanding
the real nexus of changes ; it is not the moments or pgrpppt.nal
events ^j"11 nQ",iffi fifliflh n+ho*] nor do two or more moments
determine the direction of the real changes. They are snap-
shots, rather, of the order of real changes, — photographic
records, as it were, of sequences within the real stream. The
series of perceptions in the case of an explosion, — the per-
ception of the dynamite in a certain position, followed by the
perception of the igniting of the fuse, which in turn is followed
by the perception of the effects of the explosion, — does not
explain the event. For this we must understand the char-
acteristics of the factors involved and their relation to each
other.

c. Science has substituted for the old conception of causality,
whether occult or phenomenal, tjje concept of an energy system.
We are not concerned with a priori duadic or triadic abstract
types, but with certain variables, with their form and recurrence,
as we find theTif in concrete dynamic situations. These factors
constitute what an older metaphysics used to call the ground
of the change. In the simplest type of energy system, that of
ordinary kinetic energy, we require three variables which we
define for practical purposes as constants, viz. mass, space,
and time, in the combining relation of \ MV2. If we wish
to account for the behavior of falling bodies, we use the constant
for gravity in the particular locality; we ascertain the height
from which the body falls, and we measure its velocity in the
sequence of moments of the temporal order. Wbatjs^ignifi-

na.nt. .hp.rp. is nflf, flffifr the hnrlv nnnnpiftH f,frft sninnAggJvp pnsltlODS

of A — A' — A" — A'", but that we have the constant,
gravity, acting under certain spatial and temporal conditions.

1 See the articles by W. H. Sheldon on "A Theory of Causation," Jour. Phil.
Psychol. and Sci. Meth., 1914.

104 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

It is this which gives us the law for the whole series of events.
We might call this particular situation triadic, since it can be
defined in terms of three variables. But the variables which
are necessary must be ascertained empirically for each unique
type of situation. They become more complex for chemical
compounds, where some eighty different elements with their
combining properties must be taken into account, in their vary-
ing quantitative combinations. In the case of electric currents,
we must take account, not merely of the properties of electricity,
but of the conductive medium through which it travels. In
the case of mental processes, we must take account, not merely
of the variables of mental constitution as conditioned by innate
and derived tendencies, but of the physiological conditions, and
of the environmental situation ; so we can see that our system
here becomes decidedly complex. But the significant aspect
for us in this connection is that science makes properties its
BJjajjIiBJjyjoint. Tq_try_to reduce, properties in turn to pjyisfl?"
"tidii wouHjnyolyejan endless and uselessLregxess. We may,
of course, analyze the more complex systems into simpler com-
ponents. We may find that certain properties of the more
complex system are not present in the more abstract compo-
nents ; that they are in some sense, therefore, unique functions
of the system itself. But that does not make such properties
less real in the system where we find them. Some of the
properties of water are unique. They are not characteristics
of hydrogen or oxygen, but they are none the less real char-
acteristics of water. Perhaps some day we may be able to
explain gravity by means of an electrical theory; but in the
relations hi which we now know it, it will remain just as real
as before. 'What is essential for explanation is to ascertain
the properties which are characteristic of the factors as enter-
ing into a definite system, whether that system be a chemical
compound or human society. Having found their combining
form and their degree of recurrence, we can then control the
situation on the basis of our knowledge.

v Whether, again, changes proceed by infinitesimal increments
or by finite drops is an empirical matter, and not to be de-
duced from a priori considerations. The evidence seems now
to point to definite finite quanta. Nor have we any right to

KNOWING THINGS 105

assume an infinite series of changes of a certain type unless we
deal with a pure abstraction such as Newton's first law of
motion; and even this we know now holds only for ordinary
velocities where mass is constant. .We cannot predicate abso-
lute continuity for any concrete series of changes: we cannot
say, for example, TJnat A' shall differ from A, the preceding
moment of change, merely in position. How it differs must be
empirically ascertained. We have had to relearn again and
again that our formulae hold only for a certain range of tem-
perature, pressure, and motion. And, as Poincare has pointed
out, with extreme cosmic changes in these general conditions,
all our formulas might prove false. They are pragmatic
merely, and rest upon a certain faith in the practical stability
of the cosmic system of which we are a part. There is plenty
of room, therefore, for skepticism if one chooses to indulge
in it, though the form may be different from the old Humian
kind. Most of us, however, are willing to live by faith, so
long as we can approximately find our way in the complex web
of reality.

i»lt will be seen now that the old time distinction of cause and
effect is a purely r^Qflmp^-Q"0 -it ip due to a certain psychn^
logical emphasis which may be useful for certain purposes, but
cannot be regarded as a final explanation. Whether we regard
the hydrogen properties or oxygen properties or temperature
conditions as the cause of water will be due to the steps which
we select in our procedure, and our psychological bias. Whether
we regard the productivity of the soil or the facilities of trans-
portation or the availability of power or the thrift and intelli-
gence of the people as the cause of a country's prosperity is
psychological. The real explanation must be found in the
unique ensemble of the various factors with their properties.

wlmUIVer value~~EKey may ,.haye

from a provisional point of view, must be understood in terms
of their ground or the energy system of which they are partial
emphases.

three general types of relations already men-

tioned, viz. temporal, spatial, and egg^jgijc, we must add a
fourth generaTfype, namely; relationgjof, interest. Our being
intejceated^jn_thing:s does-HOt. so far as we can_see, directly

106 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

alter the physical qualities of things, buj their significance
depends upon their relation to interest contexts, such. as the
cognitive, aesthetic, and volitional. The interest relations
may be systematic,' as in the" working out of 6ur~Ic>giual,

and economic purposes, or they_may_be merely additive. Any
fact can be joined subjectively with any other tact by such
bonds as and or with or plus or minus or other relations of ex-
ternal interest. We must remember, however, that these rela-
tions whether additive or systematic, do not affect the existence
of our external sense-things and their properties. Things

they may exist in their own

Tihygiffil nnntexts. and at the an.Ttift time exist in our contexts
of significance. If we take into account the individual Tearn-

ing process, as contrasted with the social system of experience,
this becomes a threefold location, as the individual must ascer-
tain and locate in his own experience, the results of social experi-
ence which in turn must take account of the special contexts
of nature.

We may take a fact over and over again in our logical systems
without transmuting the physical properties of the fact. Their
meaning is colored by the significance of the special system,
but their physical color remains the same. It is only altered
by physical relations. It is true that logical systems" are not
closed systems. Our thinking connects with our sensory
centers, on the one hand, and the motor centers, on the other
hand. It thus not only receives its data from the larger world,
but through its motor control can effect changes in that world.
What we are here concerned with, however, is the logical type
of system in its abstractness. And here it is true that we may
carry on our operations of thought without affecting the exist-
ence or qualities of the things upon which we operate. The
great value of the logical system is that by^thus analyzing our
world and selecting its relevant features, we are able to sub-
stitute these few features for the concrete complex of experi-
ence. This means both increased insight and increased effi-
ciency. Of course" tb~carry~on this logical alaaTysTs" we may
find it useful actually to decompose and synthesize the things
with which we deal. But that is another story, and has to do
with concrete energy relations and not merely logical relations.

KNOWING THINGS 107

This is true, likewise, in considering the energy effects of think-
ing as, for example, the using up of food energy and the produc-
tion of heat, as well as of the direct effect of our emotional
and volitional attitudes upon various physiological functions.
Here we are dealing not with logical systems as such, but in
relation to, and as aspects of, the organic system of behavior
of which they are a part.

yffe must be careful no^ fto confuse purely logical relations
Brjidley seems to do~Ih1s 'wfaerr he insists

that we cannot take facts over again in our logical experiments
of analysis and synthesis without transmuting them. We do
indeed transmute their significance in so experimenting with
them. But their energy properties and relations are only
transmuted, in so far as they are transmuted, in their energy
systems. Colors do not change their tint or hue by our think-
ing about them. They do so only as a result of physical and
physiological changes. On the other hand, we cannot-treat
the world of energies with its transmutations as a merely logi-
cal type of system, compounded of logical entities. While it
is true that in our logical universe of discourse we can take our
entities and relations over and over again in various contexts
without affecting their character, we cannot postulate a priori
that we can do so in the concrete world. In our energy sy_s-
tems ggt must discover just what difference TFnTakes that our
elements enter into differpl. mtivmiumnmi unfl Wma+.

our laws accordingly.

Things and Values l

tThe unique contribution which is made by the experience

relation is the world of values, ^alues have their basis in the

relation of objects, with their qualities, to thlTrealization of the

^wilf. They involve two relatively independent variables —

conative tendencies with their organization on the one hand,

nd feelings, with their physiological conditions, on the other

and. Thelatter afe^oumtjjp wiLli the rnlldl despised organic

sensations of the vital organs below the diaphragm. The

former imply, on the one hand, instinctive tendencies and, on

1 For a fuller discussion see "Value and Social Interpretation," The American
Journal of Sociology, 1915.

108 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

the other, tendencies derived from the organization of instinct
into social experience. Ifoth vaflahlffij arp essential: but, of
the two, orjjgimzejijtejiid^

tant, and tends to grow more so with the organization of expe-
rience. Feelings, tend-to fluctuate with organic conditions.
They are especially prominent in the case~ot ob^WQcted activity,
and tend to approximate zero with the complete organization
of activity. But the presence of feeling, or at least its pos-
sibility, must be regarded as an essential condition of
value, for an activity which can no longer be felt can hardly
be spoken of as realization. or_^fi_a.j^alu^_actiyity.
• There has been considerable dispute as regards the
ijf Yalugs. Some have contended with Socrates in fnlT" Pro-
tagoras" and with Bentham that there -are only two -kinds of
values, pleasant and unpjeasant, though these may vary indef-
initely in quantity. Pleasantness and unpleasantness, how-
ever, must be regarded as the names of two fundamental
classes of values rather than as an analysis, _of, the qualities
of values. . If values depend, as we have maintained, upon Jyhe
two variables of conative tendency and feeling, there must,
owing to the variation and complexity of these variables, be
an indefinitejnnmfcfflTfr^i^e qualities. This seems to agree
with what we find in concrete experience, where we discriminate
an indefinite number of classes of value, in accordance with the
varying types of activities and emotional states.

The question naturally arises as to the rej^on t j^yaLie

tn nthej types of qualities, such as sense
Some have suggested that value qualities should be called
tertiary qualities. This assumes the distinction between
primary and secondary sensejqualities. -This ranking, however,
is purely pragmatic, as we have shown elsewhere. The so-
called secondary qualities are just as re^M th^^Ojgairea pri-
mary qualities, "though the latter may be more important for
certain purposes. Nor na.n we *"lTBJt- ^e im plication that
value qualities are merely more subjective sense qualities.
They are jiot sense qualities at all. They belong to a different
system of reality r~wB3^sense"qualities vary independently
of our emotional-volitional situations, values vary precisely
with the unique character of these .situations. We may have

KNOWING THINGS 109

passed from enthusiastic enjoyment of ragtime to utter bore-
dom of that sort of thing, but the sense qualities of ragtime have
not changed in the meantime. Again, the world of values
grows with experience. Our reflection upon values is itself a
source of values, but our reflection upon sense qualities does
not alter their character.

i- While value qualities must not be confused with sense quali-
ties, they are p»"ft *% 1«*« yeal. They are indeed qualifications

Wft ^fl.nnnt Rdmit. that thqy arfr mere
arbitrary additions to our world, irrespective of its fundamental
constitution. They are gifts in no other sense than sense
qualities are gifts in their own unique systems. They are
unique characteristics within certain relations, implying a
specific type of organization. They are just as much a part of
the real world under their own conditions as are the unique
properties of water within their own special system. They
may even be said to reveal the richness of the world to a greater
degree than ihft sense qualities. Ji'ney give us
called the

in activities as opposed to being a mere mechanical agent or
a mere neutral spectator like the Sankyah soul.

^Values permit of their own type of orgamzation. It is not
true that valllfi Dualities are merely private and fleeting. They
are capable of comparison and agreement; thev are socially
predictable. And scT we nave our cooEery, our science of
economics, and our art, which would be impossible if values
were of a merely unique, private, and irreversible character.
They may, indeed, be more permanent than sense things.
Our biological values have a high degree of uniformity in the
development of the race. Even our aesthetic and ethical values
show a considerable constancy. Greek art is still beautiful
to us, and the ethical ideals of the Hebrew prophets are still
standard for us. On the other hand, some of the chemical
elements, like radium, would seem to be undergoing a radical
change as regards their qualities. Indeed, the possibility of
social structure — our mutual confidence on which credit is
based, and our mutual appreciation on which friendship and
art depend — presupposes a certain constancy and agreement
as regards values. Thej£_jgQt^D&-j^^

110 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

values wfrfefr fflP"*' but for *ha jQt^ent.. There is, too, the

uniqueness which must go with individual organization and
with the peculiar context of li ving, social experience of which we
are a part. Our agreements and laws are, indeed, abstractions
— nets in which we try to hold the concrete, real world. But
this applies also to other types o£ qualitative selection. In
any case it is the more stable and universal features which give
significance to the more unique and fleeting ones.

Looked at from the point of view of the world of values,
things become merely instrumental. They are the circum-
stances and accidents to be controlled and made ovqr, the raw
material for creative transformation. We cannot attribute
value to things on their own account as we can to selves. The
values of things are derived from their being taken up into the
process of conscious realization. Agnosticism is quite right
in maintaining that we cannot know the inwardness of things,
but this is because they have no inwardness. Things have no
halo of value on their own account. r|^_J[ghiMrff fV>1'rifrg _
fixjgtj as Hegel would say, an^sich, and^jaed^jt^ch ; that is,
they exist for the spectator, and ^iot for the things themselves.
At least so it seems to us in our limited perspective^ In^the —
world of values, man and conscious wills like his are the measure
of things.

Those idealists, who have made value the ultimate category
of existence and who have insisted that only the intrinsically
valuable is real, have been forced by their logic to deny l^eality
to things as contrasted with values. Thus T. H. Green, hav-
ing assumed that the universe is ultimately a unity of meaning,
that the reality of things is constituted by reflective experi-
ence, and finding that nature cannot itself be regarded as such
an experience, can give things a locus only in our own and the
absolute experience. .Hato^ .likewise, having assumed that
only worth4& real, is forced to accord to the world of perceptual
things only a phenomenal reality. The real world becomes a
world of normative ideals of which the concrete world is only
a poor imitation. Nature can be acknowledged as real only
as it is reduced to mathematical models. tBut while^we^must
insist upon the reality of values in their own unique systems,
we must also admit that things have qualities and relations of

KNOWING THINGS 111

their own in other systems which we must acknowledge. It
is indeed through the existence ol such sySlfimS as the mechani-'
cal, chemical, and biological, that value realization is made
possible, however much the existence of value systems enhances
the retrospect and prospect. It is only fair to say, however,
that the overemphasis of the idealist has been called forth by
the understatement and skepticism of the materialist, and
historically has constituted a compensation for the latter's
depreciation of values. Nor has materialism of this sort been
confined to a few philosophers. If so, it would be compara-
tively harmless, as but few can understand them. The eternal
protest of the poets and prophets is rather against the material-
istic deadness and commonplace which tends to overlay the
dull routine of human society, and which makes us act as though
merely things were real, and as though selves were mere things
to be used accordingly. "As against this general social tendency,
we need the romantic movements which emphasize that, in
human economy at least, things must be instrumental to values.
This may also be true in the larger cosmic economy. We know
that within human control, values may condition the survival
of things. This happens whenever the will selects on the basis
of ideals. Whether a statue shall survive as a statue depends
upon its formal fitness rather than upon the properties of its
material, which may be Parian marble. Whether a grove or
a hill survives may depend upon its relation to human purposes.
IfJ/here is a conscious power that exercises selection in the larger
universe, tnen survival in the whole of existence as wejLaauin-
*riie world or Human control, mayjiepend upon its value fit-
ness — its harmony with an ideal constitution.

~To us, i5cteeo!7natural beauty seemsjan accidental framing of
the contexts of our environment. We limit nature arbitrarily^
itlseems, b^o^J^terest, and within those limits Imd an aesthetic
value realized, as in a mountain or lake or woodland scene.
In the case of artificial beauty, on the other hand, the will is
able^to create its owiPconditions . It can eliminate a great
deal of detail and "'liEus produce greater clearness and distinct-
ness than the natural object usually has. But both artificial
and natural beauty must suggest life and energy inTiarmoStOns
interplay and equilibrium in order to fulfill the demands of

112 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

the aesthetic instinct. Both jiejaend, in the last analysis. upon_
formal laws which are forced iipnn mir expprie.ric.p an
must somehow be inherit in fog pfoucture of reality. We are"
somehow, in the process of cosmic evolution, made for the
sunset as well as the sunset for us. Nature but reveals through
human nature its immanent tendency toward order and beauty.
In the words of the Swedish poet, Runeberg: "Art does not
raise nature and it does not make it more majestic than it
really is, but it raises human nature to see its own glory and
the glory of the world — it helps to see right through the con-
fusion of the external."

PART II
CONSCIOUSNESS AND MIND

CHAPTER VII

THE CONCEPT OF CONSCIOUSNESS
Examination of Theories

THE question confronts us at the outset : what sort of reality
can we assign to consciousness ? Is it an energy or thing —
another kind of thing, perhaps, from the world of things it
illumines? Anaxagoras evidently felt after some entity
which he could set over against the world of ordinary things.
So he invented Nous ( infinite and self-ruled, mixed with noth-
ing, the thinnest of all things and the purest; and it has all
knowledge about everything and the greatest strength; and
Nous has power over all things, over the whole revolution, so
that it began to revolve in the beginning ; and it set in order
all things that were to be and that were ; and all Nous is alike,
both the greater and the smaller.' Strange attempt this to get
away from the world of quantitative processes, but lacking the
tools to do so ; to find something which does not move and yet
is the source of motion. This idea of something which is not
movement and yet the source of movement has been stated re-
cently, in modern terms, by the late Professor C. S. Minot:
"The universe consists of force and consciousness. As con-
sciousness by our hypothesis can initiate the change of the form
of energy, it may be that without consciousness the universe
would come to absolute rest." l But this ambiguous status of
consciousness, as that which is and is not a thing, which does
not move and yet is the source of movement, is not very con-
sistent or satisfactory. We must locate consciousness in one
category or the other, and to that end we must make our
concepts more clear and definite. Ostwald frankly treats con-
sciousness as a form of energy convertible into other energies.
But his tools have not enabled him to deal with consciousness

i Science, N.S., Vol. XVI, No. 392, p. 26.
115

116 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

as such. What he has dealt with is physiological and psycho-
logical processes. Now I freely admit that we may look upon
psychological processes as energetic. I can see nothing in the
way of such a view except prejudice.

The insistence in recent times that mental processes are not
quantitatively comparable is due to the confusing of processes
with the consciousness of processes. The consciousness of blue
or pain or effort is not a quantitative affair. But the processes
themselves are, 7 however crudely, quantitatively comparable.
Wherever you can apply the category of more or less, you have
quantity./^There are intensive quantities, as well as extensive.
That wexcaunot in the former case superimpose a quantitative
unit does not prove that they do not differ in quantity. This
is merely a matter of the exactness of the quantitative com-
parison. Fechner's mistake was not in regarding psychological
processes as quantitative, but in trying to equate processes
where quantitative units are possible with those where no such
units are possible. It is no argument against the quantitative
character of mental processes that they also differ qualitatively
and that you cannot equate quantity and qualityr Neither
can you do so in chemistry. There, too, you have^o recognize
certain original elements as well as quantitative relations.

Now all psychological processes, be they sensational, affec-
tional, intellectual or volitional, differ in intensity, as well as
in kind. Bergson's attempt to reduce psychic intensity to a
qualitative manifold is due to his reading the complexity of
the physiological conditions into the psychological result.
We must take the psychic process for what it appears to in-
trospection, irrespective of the antecedents. £Pn"e variation in
intensity, moreover, bears definite and describable relations
to physical and physiological conditions. Hence I see no reason
why we should not use energy as a term for such differences.
Pressures may be heavier or lighter without varying in kind.
Colors may be brighter or fainter, pains may be intenser or
weaker, memories may last longer or shorter, ideas may be more
or less vivid, the feeling of effort may vary in strength. Where-
ever you can vary as regards more or less, without variation
in quality, there you have quantity. What else would you
call it? Whether there is also in such cases variation in the

THE CONCEPT OF CONSCIOUSNESS 117

quality of the psychological processes, introspection must de-
cide. There is no other judge. This difference in intensity
must not be confused with our spreading out our qualitative
series, such as our color series, in space in order to schematize
the qualitative relations. Though our figure here is spatial,
that does not make the relations quantitative. Distance here
is merely figurative for the direction of difference of quality.
/^WlTat I have said in regard to perceptual contents, I might
have said in regard to will. Will or desire is capable of being
more or less, even it we cannot measure it with exactness.
All psychological processes are conative processes. They in-
volve motor tendency and this varies in strength. ^The mis-
take has not been in regarding conative tendencies or motives
as differing in strength, but in regarding them as forces in-
dependent of the ego and acting upon the ego. Whether will,
or conative tendency, which lies at the bottom of all psychic
processes, is an energy different from electrical and nervous
energy ; how it interacts with other forms ; whether it is radio-
active or has some still subtler mode of making a difference;
whether it acts at a distance, — this would have to be dealt
with in a discussion on energy and not on consciousness. At
present I am inclined to think that mind-stuff is a distinctive
type of energy, however ignorant we may be of its relation to
other energies. Moreover, it seems evident that conative
tendency is not always, and therefore need not be, conscious
tendency, and that mind stuff and consciousness do not neces-
sarily coincide. Whether, again, all energy can be reduced to
one kind and whether will is that fundamental kind, is a ques-
tion to be decided by scientific convenience and quite distinct
from the problem of consciousness.

While we must acknowledge, then, that conscious processes
are more or less, that they have describable relations or con-
tinuities with other processes, such as physiological and chemi-
cal, and that therefore we may extend the term energy to cover
these, we cannot on that account admit that consciousness as
such is capable of more or less, any more than of qualitative
difference. ; Is the consciousness of extended or heavy or colored
things an extended or heavy or colored consciousness? Is the
consciousness of a greater intensity a more intense consciousness

118 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

than the consciousness of a less intensity? I see no need for
assuming a difference in consciousness, v The variations in kind
and in intensity can all be accounted for as due to variations
in the complexity and intensity of the processes, conditioned
by the cortex in the last analysis. There is no need in du-
plicating these differences on the side of consciousness. It is
easier to suppose consciousness a ^constant and regard the
variations as due to physiological ana conative processes than
to duplicate the processes by making consciousness an energy.
But if the fact of consciousness does not vary, either as regards
quantity or quality, with the variation of energetic processes,
then we may be sure that it is not itself an energy or a function
of energy, but must be treated as an independent dimension of
reality. All our scientific evidence, introspective, biological,
and pathological fits in with this view. ]/ii is with the com-
plexity of biological structure that consciousness has come into
evidence ; and the differentiation of conscious processes in the
way of sensations, memory, reasoning, has followed the growth
in complexity of biological structure. ; And, again, with fatigue,
disease and degeneracy of such structures, the complex psy-
chical processes fail to operate. When we are tired, we fail
to recall a familiar name, though we are conscious enough at
the time. Disease may make us lose our visual and auditory
images, may make us fail to think coherently, and to regulate
our activities in a purposive and orderly way, though we are
as conscious as ever. The energy and organization of conscious
processes, therefore, cannot be found on the side of consciousness.

Moreover, however much continuity there may be on the
side of the energetic conditions of consciousness, consciousness
as an effective factor no doubt appears at a leap — as sensations
of light when the structural conditions of the eye are complete,
or of tone with the presence of the basilar membrane, or of
electricity when the proper motion or chemical conditions are
furnished, with the difference that, while in the above cases the
relations are energetic, the energies varying in some quantita-
tive proportion, in the case of consciousness the category of
energy is not applicable.

Theories which try to define consciousness in terms of energy
must somehow surreptitiously add consciousness at some stage

THE CONCEPT OF CONSCIOUSNESS 119

of the process. They nanngj^(jftriv& it from energy. ^ It is not
clear that the energetic equivalences are in any wise affected
by consciousness being added. The adding of the fact of
consciousness is sometimes concealed by using the term poten-
tial which covers so many sins. Certain energetic situations
are potentially conscious only on condition that you add con-
sciousness. Certain optical processes of light waves, retinal
and cerebral changes are sensations of light only when you
add consciousness to the situation. In the same way, certain
dynamic tensions in connection with the brain are not as such
consciousness. This must be added in order for processes to be
aware of themselves as association and meaning.

It has become the fashion now to state consciounsess in terms
of empirical situations of experience rather than in terms of a
thing or energy outside experience. Here, again, there has
been difference of emphasis. What part of the experience
situation is it that is identical with consciousness?

The older writers on psychology were wont to identify
consciousness with the sum total of experience. They made a
catalogue of its various contents — sensations, memories, con-
cepts, feelings, and volitions, and called the whole conscious-
ness. What mental processes are when they are not conscious
they did not try to explain, unless indeed they fell back upon a
materialistic physiology, or more recently upon the vague no-
tion of the subconscious which is left undefined. It has seemed,
however, to some recent psychologists that consciousness must
be defined in terms of some part of the psychological situation,
rather than in terms of the situation as a whole.
£.'<)ne group of writers would identify consciousness with the
motor aspect of the psychological situation. It has been pointed
out that the motor sensations occupy a peculiarly prominent
place in attention. Some would even go so far as to reduce
mental activity altogether to kinaesthetic sensations and images.
At any rate such were the only facts which Wm. James could in-
trospectively verify, i It has been shown by the Dewey school l
that strain, doubt, and readjustment are conditions of conscious-

1 See "James Memorial Volume," Longman's, pp. 73 f ; also E. B. McGilvary,
Discussion, the Jour. Phil. Psych, and Sci. Meth., Vol. IX, pp. 301, 302, and
Dewey's Reply, Ibid., 544-548.

120 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

ness and that, when those are wanting, consciousness drops out.
It has, therefore, seemed that consciousness must be identified
with certain organic checks and releases in the realization of
the vital impulse. /.Stated in more general terms, the unique
function of consciousness is to control behavior.1

The elements in the psychological situation, emphasized by
the motor theory, are no doubt significant for the understand-
ing of consciousness. But I do not believe they afford a final
explanation. ; In the first place, the motor sensations and motor
attitudes are merely symptomatic of the system of conative
tendency which presses for realization. At most they are only
part of the content of the situation. The more organized the
conative tendency is, the less noticeable are the motor sen-
sations, and the more important is the part which the intel-
lectual elements play in the organization or steering of the
stream of impulse. While again it is true that "consciousness
plays about the zone of activity" (to use Bergson's picturesque
phrase), or rather serves to reveal it and show its whither, we
must not confuse the conditions of consciousness with the fact
itself. Because consciousness appears under certain condi-
tions of intensity and strain, it does not follow that conscious-
ness itself can be reduced to terms of such intensity. It seems,
on the contrary, to be a new fact, discontinuous with the
antecedent conditions.

•/Another group of writers would identify consciousness with
the cognitive side — the relational aspect. This theory is
an implication of the idealistic movement. Since the relations
are taken as existing within the content rather than as legislated
from without, the theory harks back to Hegel and T. H. Green
rather than to Kant. In any case it is the relational aspect

1 It is impossible here to do justice to the functional view of consciousness.
It has found classic expression in " Studies in Logical Theory " by Dewey and
other members of the Chicago School. See also the lucid statement in " Prag-
matism and its Critics," by A. W. Moore; "Definition of the Psychical," by
G. H. Mead, University of Chicago, Decennial Publications, First Series,
Vol. Ill, Pt. II, pp. 79-112; Angell's "Psychology." B. H. Bode identifies
consciousness with the "fringe" considered as a total character, "which is in
the nature of a reference or relationship that faces the future," but the function is
control. Phil. Rev., Vol. 23, pp. 389-409. While the functional theory has made
an important contribution in showing the part played by conscious processes in
prevision and adjustment, it does not define consciousness as such.

THE CONCEPT OF CONSCIOUSNESS 121

which is regarded as^ giving the contents meaning. The
relations~wEicTrare emphasized by a contemporary author are
the logical relations. Consciousness is identified with the con-
cept of cognitive meaning. To quote Professor F. J. E. Wood-
bridge: "We are wont to think of a world without conscious-
ness in it as a world devoid of meaning. Add consciousness to
that world and then meaning is added, but nothing else. . . .
Indeed, it seems to me, on analysis of the situation, that just
this character of 'awareness' turns out to be the manifold and
irresistible meaning connections which the things in the con-
scious situation have." x And again : "The peculiar way in
which consciousness connects the objects in it is, thus, the way
of knowledge, actual or possible." 2

iXn the first place, the attempt to define consciousness in terms
of cognitive meaning or logical relations seems too narrow a
definition. There are other types of meaning beside the re-
lational type. There is the cumulative perceptual disposition
as in listening to a melody or in the immediate sense of duration
as conditioned by attention strain. There are also the aesthetic
and mystical types of meaning which, while they possess a
certain noetic value, cannot be regarded as relational in the
logical sense. Moreover, there may be types of experience of
a more primitive character to which we cannot ascribe the
category of meaning. Hypothetically at least, we must assume
a first interest, a pure perception, which is innocent of any
associative context. In everyday life we are conscious of a
vast number of sensations which we do not attend to and which,
therefore, have no meaning. Shall we read out these other
types of meaning or these mere "awarenesses" from the cate-
gory of consciousness, when we are conscious of them? That
seems at least arbitrary.

pAs, however, the main thesis true that by adding conscious-
ness we add meaning? And conversely, that by taking away

^'Studies in Philosophy and Psychology," 1906, pp. 160 and 161. Cp.
R. B. Perry, " Conceptions and Misconceptions of Consciousness," Psychol.
Rev., Vol. 77, esp. p. 296.

* Jour. Phil. Psychol. and Sc-i. Meth., Vol. II, p. 122. Professor E. B. Mc-
Gil vary regards consciousness as "a unique togetherness" not further analyz-
able. See "Experience as Pure and Consciousness as Meaning," the Jour.
Phil. Psychol. and Sci. Meth., Vol. VIII, pp. 511 ff.

122 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

consciousness we take away meaning? Do we add the mean-
ing to Homer's Iliad or to Euclid's Geometry or to our own
meditations of yesterday by becoming conscious of them?
Do they not as a matter of fact have their own relational con-
text, quite irrespective of our awareness, — a meaning which is
socially objective and which we must respect? (ft would seem,
then, that the world of cognitive and other types of meaning
into which the objects of the world have been woven are as
independent of consciousness as are their spatial and temporal
contexts. Consciousness no more creates the former type of
context than it does the latter.

!. It may be argued, perhaps, that, while the objective or social
meaning is thus independent of our awareness the subjec-
tive way of taking or apperceiving these meanings is identical
with consciousness. This is nearer the truth at any rate. But
even in taking account of my own present meaning and its
implications, I must recognize that it is not created by my
awareness, though this awareness is a condition of the mean-
ing's intuiting itself. In the deliberative process, for example,
the will discovers its trend, the implications in its push of tend-
ency, in its system of relations. But this direction and com-
plexity of will do not originate when, in the stress of readjust-
ment to a new situation, we become conscious of their implied
meaning. '- Neither the conative system nor the perplexing
situation are created by consciousness. -The awareness is added
as a new fact — a gift from the larger universe to the energetic
situation. It does not create the personal, any more than the
social meaning. In either case it is a condition for intuiting
or lighting up such meaning with its inherent relationships.

If what is intended (and the advocates of the relational view
of consciousness shift easily and without warning from epis-
temological to physiological terminology) is not that conscious-
ness is a relation between terms figuring somehow within the
field of experience, but that it is a type of interaction between
energetic centers, a type of energetic continuity between energy
as nervous structure and energy as stimulus,1 then we shall

1 W. P. Montague identifies "the field of consciousness with the field of poten-
tial energy set up in the nerve centers," the self being conceived "as a system of
interconnected stresses." The Jour. Phil. Psychol. and Sci. Meth., Vol. V, p. 210.

THE CONCEPT OF CONSCIOUSNESS 123

have to ask how it figures or what difference it makes to this
interaction, j If this interaction is an interaction of non-con-
scious energies, how can it account for the presence of con-
sciousness? The fact that it appears under certain energetic
conditions of structure and stimulus does not prove that it is
nothing else than the interaction of structure and stimulus, if
you choose to use relation in this extraconscious sense. I can-
not distinguish this miraculous production of consciousness,
out of non-conscious energies, from the materialistic position,
which I shall discuss later.

What would seem to be indicated, then, is that consciousness
is a fact over and beyond relations, whether logical relations
or energetic relations — a fact which is somehow bound up with
the subjective significance of relations; which makes energy
aware of itself as meaningful energy. Just as space is not a
relation or a system of relations, but makes possible the whole
system of distance interactions, schematized by our construc-
tive purpose into a system of relations ; and as time is not a
relation, but makes possible the relations of before and after, of
past, present, and future, so consciousness, though not a rela-
tion, makes possible all significance of relations including time
and space relations, as well as logical relations. Just as in the
case of space, it is not a question of a relation to space, but a
question of the relation of energies to each other as conditioned
by space, so in the case of consciousness it is not a question of
the relation of facts or energies to consciousness, but the re-
lation of these facts or energies to each other within the field
of consciousness. Consciousness is added to a certain type of
energetic relation, where conative constitution is a factor of the
energetic system. < Just as certain substances such as mother
of pearl have no color of their own, but are colored by the
variegated light which plays upon them, so consciousness can
claim no quality or relation as its own. It merely brings to
light the variety of the context. } If we take consciousness as
such a neutral light, we are free to account for process and its
qualities in terms of the energetic situations. Tone, color, and
pain, we then find, are as much processes as weight or chemical
change. What consciousness adds is the awareness, which is
something over and above the energetic relations.

124 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

If consciousness is not a relation, nor a thing, nor a form of
energy, shall we accept the nominalist view that consciousness
is merely a name for the sum total of conscious processes, and
that any attempt to deal with consciousness as such is a mere
hypostasis — a mistaking of a logical abstraction for an inde-
pendent reality? Is it like abstracting somniferousness from
somniferous substances and then treating it as an independent
fact? Is it nothing over and beyond certain processes?

There is surely enough truth in the nominalist view to make
it plausible. We have seen by this time that consciousness
cannot be a thing; that, therefore, if you abstract from the
processes in connection with which consciousness appears, there
is no thing left. But is there not something suspicious about
this introspective method and its easy solution? Does it not
include first of all the fact which it was to separate, and then
say that it is not outside? It is true that outside of conscious
processes introspection furnishes no evidence of consciousness.
But why should it? Neither does chemistry furnish any evi-
dence of water or radium outside of the things known to contain
water or radium. If you wanted arguments for the presence
of consciousness outside of empirical conscious processes, you
surely would not get them from introspection.

But the problem has not been stated fairly by the introspec-
tionist. The ego is not statable merely as a stream of conscious
processes. The ego is an affair of dispositions or tendencies,
sometimes conscious, sometimes not. Consciousness surely
does not make the stream of life continuous. The tendencies
in the way of association and memory are present, sleeping or
waking, else they would be of no use. Meaning is a matter
of the working of the associative mechanism, and this is recog-
nized as a physiological fact. What makes a fact suggestive
at any one time, or what makes culture, is only to a small ex-
tent conscious. Even when adaptations are conscious for a
while they may become habits. What becomes of conscious-
ness when it is "not needed"? The question is not : can you
observe consciousness outside of conscious processes? Can
you, like the old schoolmaster, see some boys that are not here ?
That is to talk nonsense. The question is : what significance
does this fact of consciousness have in the stream of the ego-

THE CONCEPT OF CONSCIOUSNESS 125

tendencies, where it is sometimes present, sometimes seemingly
absent or absent so far as effective relation to the processes
goes ; which at most only partly, and in small part, illumines
our fund of tendencies even when we are most awake? In
short, what makes the difference between sleeping and waking?
What happens when we become conscious ? During sleep we
are still there to other observers. We are energetic activities
which can become conscious in an instant, by waking up. In
the meantime there is no evidence to others of consciousness.
A little change in blood distribution and heat, perhaps, or it
may be only an external stimulus of some intensity, furnishes
the condition for the reappearance of consciousness, and the
wheels of mind go round again in a significant way. The world
has value once more. With the increased working of the extra-
conscious machinery of association, we pass thus from sleeping
to dim drowsiness and to organized waking meaning. The
conscious moments seem discontinuous. In the stream of
tendencies which we call the ego, there are beside the con-
scious moments, the changes which the purposive ego and the
spectators must interpolate in order to understand the conscious
processes. If it were not for this seeming coming and going
of consciousness as contrasted with the continuity of the en-
ergetic processes, on which our feeling of continuity itself de-
pends, we would not abstract consciousness — but what does
it all mean ?

The materialist is ready with a simple and at first sight plau-
sible answer. He at least tries to meet the problem of seeming
discontinuity in nature. His answer is that consciousness is
a discontinuous function or incidental effect of the mechanical
processes. He includes not only consciousness as such in this
" epiphenomenon," but all conscious processes. These, more-
over, are not energy, but a picturesque chiaroscuro or halo of
the going-on of the energetic processes, which are mechanically
conceived. Or, stating it more crassly, but not less metaphori-
cally, "the brain secretes thought as the liver secretes bile."
Or, if you want more metaphors, consciousness is to the physio-
logical mechanism what the headlight is to the steam engine.

But while metaphors have always appealed to human beings,
they are not very satisfactory as explanation. The conception

126 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

of energy for one thing has changed, and the materialist, famil-
iar with the physical speculations of to-day, would be more
apt to use electrical than mechanical metaphors. That, how-
ever, would not essentially alter the problem. We have also,
seen that conative processes, whether conscious or not, must
be thought of as energy. They vary as regards quantity ; they
bear definite relations to other forms of energy. We shall
have to transfer these, therefore, to the energetic side of the
account. Nor is it any argument against these processes that
they are different from other forms of energy, that some of them
at least are not extended, that they cannot be weighed, and
that, therefore, the category of mechanical motion is not ap-
plicable. Electrical energy and neural energy do not have
extensive mass or weight ; they do not come under mechanical
motion ; yet we have to recognize them as forms of energy, and
as making definite differences to other forms. We need have
no difficulty, therefore, in recognizing mind stuff as energy.
And why should certain processes cease to be energy because
illumined by consciousness, any more than space, though not
active, prevents bodies from being active, though activity has
a very different value, and scope, too, no doubt, because con-
scious?

The common objection, raised against materialism, that it
violates the law of conservation of energy, would not be serious
if the theory met the facts, as scientific laws are mere general-
izations from facts. It would at most only show the limita-
tions of the so called law. Neither is it an answer to material-
ism to charge it with moral baseness, as our ideals are what
they are on any theory. And sometimes sad things are true.
Our only concern now is, does it explain the presence of con-
sciousness ? We would have to agree with materialism that
consciousness as such is not an energy, and hence cannot do
what energies do, even though we must recognize conscious
processes as energy. Consciousness is not capable of quantita-
tive variation. It cannot be the cause of motion and change.
But can we regard it as an effect of energy? We are familiar
now with all sorts of transformations of energy. We know
that mechanical motion can bring about electricity or heat, so
different from itself, But can we also conceive of energetic

THE CONCEPT OF CONSCIOUSNESS 127

process producing a fact which is not energy at all — not trans-
formable into energy, to be sure, because it is a different sort
of fact, but can it, not being energy, be caused by energy?
There is an unbridgable saltus here in the thinking of material-
ism; and none have been more candid in admitting this than
some of the materialists themselves.

I do not see, however, that the saltus is any greater in making
a non-energetic consciousness the effect of energetic changes
than in recognizing, as James and Minot do, that consciousness
is not a thing or energy, and yet make it produce energetic
changes. The chasm is about as wide one way as the other.
That one form of energy can bring about changes in another
form of energy is within experience and probability, but not
that energy should be converted into non-energy, or vice versa.

If materialism holds with Hobbes that consciousness is a
property of matter and not a miracle merely, it must also admit
that it is totally different in kind from any other properties.
It thus practically admits that consciousness is an independent
variable or attribute of reality.

isAny theory, whatever it calls itself, which strives to derive
consciousness, will have the difficulty of materialism — in losing
the quantitative and energetic in what is not energetic. This
involves an unintelligible saltus; and we shall always, therefore,
look for a smoother transition between consciousness, on the
one hand, and the world of processes, with their quantitative
variations, on the other. This is furnished in the theory of
consciousness as a constant in the universe, though depending
upon certain conditions for its manifestation, as electricity is
now regarded as an original fact (by some the most original),
though dependent upon certain conditions. This brings it
into the realm of the familiar.

Materialism has at least the advantage of simplicity, but
parallelism is as cumbrous as it is unintelligible. To remedy
the fancied injury to the law of the conservation of energy, it
duplicates physiological and psychological processes and leaves
them suspended in mid-air, without either series making any
difference to the other. To speak of psychological contents,
where there is no evidence, is surely doubtful psychology, and,
so far as I can see, has no epistemological justification. To

128 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

wind up with idealistic monism is as roundabout as it is a
questionable way of arriving at such a doctrine. To make
psychological processes parallel to mechanical rearrangements
can only convey sense to a man who does not think about it.
Even if we mean by parallel merely a one to one correspondence,
we have no right to assume a priori that such obtains. And
it would be the wildest sort of imagination to hope to establish
it by empirical proof. And, lastly, to give the world of physical
objects any status at all, since it can make no difference to the
world of psychic processes, seems impossible. If this furnishes
credulous people a short cut to idealism, let them enjoy it.

ixWe have already seen that psychological processes must be
regarded as energy, bearing statable relations to other forms
of energy. The physiological body is a net for catching several
types of energy, mechanical, chemical, electrical, nervous, and
conative. There is no reason for drawing any line of holy and
unholy between these, at least for scientific purposes, and to-
gether they furnish the individual organism with its race and
individual characteristics, its continuities, and its specific activ-
ities. To this stream of processes consciousness is somehow
added. But it is certainly not parallel to it.

There remains the interaction theory, with its insistence upon
the causal efficacy of consciousness. With the best of motives,
this theory is as confused epistemologically as the preceding.
There can be no sense in speaking of the consciousness of pain
or blue as interacting with the physiological processes of pain
or blue. The pain processes and the blue processes, no doubt,
vary with other energies, and in turn act upon them, but this
is not the case with the awareness of them. By stating con- ir
sciousness as an independent variable, an ultimate, non-ener-
getic fact, we shall have the simplicity of materialism without
the contradiction of trying to convert energy into non-energy.
We shall fulfill the intent of the materialist by taking con-
sciousness out of the energetic category, while we acknowledge
the energetic claims of the conative processes. We shall save
the duplication of parallelism and its absurd separation of
processes into two independent causal series, but we shall ac-
complish the intent of parallelism by showing the independent
and non-derivable character of consciousness as such. We shall

THE CONCEPT OF CONSCIOUSNESS 129

finally accomplish the intent of the interaction theory by show-
ing the energetic character of the conative processes, their
efficacious relation to the other energies of nature, while we
get rid of the absurdity of having a non-energetic consciousness
interact with an energetic world.

It is time we were getting over the false prejudice that the
body is something mean and base and that activity is being
degraded by being called physiological. The Greeks did not
look upon the body as anything degraded. On the contrary,
it was to them the embodiment of beauty and meaning. It
furnished the inspiration for Greek sculpture. It is fraught
with the potentialities of life. Plato alone, in some of his
pessimistic moods, makes the body a prison house. Aristotle
is here the truer Greek. For the evolutionist, the body is the
bearer of the tendencies, the biological heritage, of the race;
and for the psychologist it must furnish continuity and meaning
to life through habit and memory. Mean is what mean does,
and good is what good does, and if the body is bound up with
all our badness, it also is bound up with all our goodness and
appreciation of beauty ; it makes us one with the world of en-
ergies, at the same tune that with its tendencies it differentiates
those energies for us. All it needs is consciousness to convert
this structure, when it has reached a certain complexity, into
actual value. And it does not, like Prakriti, vanish at the
glance of Purusha. But it furnishes the activity still, though
meaningful activity. And so we fail to give it credit. The
body is the organ and the music, too, as consciousness is added
to the complex bodily energies. The ceaseless, untiring player
is nature, which in us becomes purpose and ideals. It is a mis-
take to identify the body merely with the physical and chemical
forms of energy. It includes nervous and will energy as well.
There is ample chance for a hierarchy of energies within the
body — the bearer not only of the past and present, but preg-
nant also with the future.

Consciousness and Mind Stuff

This theory of consciousness removes the greatest obstacle
to the proper metaphysical understanding of mental processes,
viz.- the dogma that their existence depends upon our con-

130 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

sciousness of them. / There are two conceptions of the exist-
ence of mental processes when we are not conscious of them
which may be regarded as typical. * One is Augustine's view
that ideas exist in a mysterious storehouse of the mind, thence
to be dragged forth under certain circumstances. The other
view is that mental facts exist only when we are aware of them.
This has been expressed recently by William James: "The
percipi in these originals of experience is the esse; the curtain
is the picture." x It is one of the ironies of history that nothing
has played into the hands of the materialist as this doctrine of
subjective idealism, that esse est percipi, when applied to our
mental states. If we assume that our mental processes cannot .*•»
exist unless we are aware of them, then we must assume like-
wise that when we are not thus conscious, mental facts are
converted into material processes; and thus we have an in-
finite number of miracles — magic transformations from the
material into the mental and vice versa, unless indeed we assume
with materialism that the halo of mental facts is extinguished
altogether without any energetic equivalent — to be created
afresh under certain conditions, as Heraclitus' sun is extinguished
and born from the sea. How such a somersault theory should
have been tolerated as scientific it is difficult to see. It cer-
tainly indicates a tremendous appetite for the miraculous.

Since subjective idealism assumes that mental processes
exist only in a field of consciousness, it follows that mental
processes must be witnessed in order not to pass into nothingness.
Moreover, since subjective idealism likewise assumes that physi-
cal qualities exist only as mental states, nature too must be
witnessed in order to exist. It is true that such witnessing need
not be by you or me or any particular finite self, but by a more
inclusive witness. Even so it would seem to follow that my
individual reality and yours disappears when there is no in-
dividual witnessing, though held perhaps, in the meantime, as
a configuration of content in the consciousness of some other
witness. 'What constitutes the real significance of subjective—*—
idealism is that processes and relations in order to exist must
be witnessed. Historically it has never meant solipsism, as
there has always been the assumption, tacit or explicit, of

1 "A Pluralistic Universe," p. 378.

THE CONCEPT OF CONSCIOUSNESS 131

other witnesses beside the individual moment. It was taken
for granted even by Berkeley that the universe did not vanish,
when he as an individual happened to nod. In fact its char-
acter need not be altered so long as there is any witness.

The attempt to define the witnessing has given rise to a diver-
sity of opinion. Some have argued that since reality does not
seem to be dependent upon your or my witnessing, there must
be an absolute witness, which includes all finite contents of
experience in one comprehensive and eternal field of conscious-
ness. Our fleeting moments are but fragmentary flashes of
this complete self-consciousness. And whatever reality we
have, we therefore eternally hold within, and by virtue of, the
absolute. Others, again, have insisted that plural finite wit-'
nesses, sharing the same contents, are sufficient. The reservoir
may be a larger cosmic field such as Fechner's earth-soul, or
a finite supernatural mind which envelops us. Such plural
witnesses it is felt are sufficient to guarantee the reality and
meaning of our evanescent contexts of experience.
/ In either form, the theory of subjective idealism is a dogma
unsupported by evidence. It rests on the fallacious use of
the method of agreement which merely emphasizes that mental
states exist when we do take account of them. This no one
would dispute. That they also make a difference when we do
not take account of them, — a difference to the significance
and control of the content when later attended to or to the
sequence of events in consciousness, — is now a commonplace
of psychology. It is a gratuitous assumption to suppose that
mental processes are created and vanish with the appearance
and vanishing of the consciousness of them. Memories are
certainly not created when we become aware of them. Asso-
ciation has its own conative context which is not a context of
atoms and molecules. Tendencies, which we cannot recall,
make a difference to the meaning and value of facts which we
do recall. The shifting of the attention, which makes a mar-
ginal fact focal, does not make the fact. In the perception of
things, and in the filmy texture of the imagination, we have the
reinstatement of the original sensory elements, which must,
therefore, have existed in the meantime, ^n short, we have
come to accept the fact now that mind is a much broader term

132 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

than consciousness; and that, while consciousness comes and
goes, our conative attitudes, our cognitive and aesthetic contexts
remain fairly permanent. It is easier, at least, to think that
the limits of mind are not the limits of attention or awareness ;
that will attitudes and ideas do not cease when we attend to
them — to be magically recreated upon occasion ; that in the
meantime they make a real difference to the total attention
situation ; that they are simply brought into the narrow field
of attention by the machinery of association, and the deter-
minate interest at the time ; that like other energies they obey
definite laws of spreading and recurrence ; but that they be-
come conscious facts only under certain conditions of intensity
and organization. Their value for the cognitive moment
arises when they become conscious, but not their own existence
or meaning. Augustine, with his storehouse of ideas, is nearer
the truth than subjective idealism with its perpetual miracles,
for he at least does not establish leaps which nature does not
know.

;,-What I have tried to make clear is that consciousness and
mind are conceptually separable facts, that consciousness is a
fact superadded upon the contents of mind and their relations,
under certain energy conditions of complexity and intensity ;
and that this consciousness when so added, does not make the
will attitudes or perceptual contents nor does it add the re-
lations of meaning to the contents. We no more make our own
mind than the mind of Homer in becoming conscious of it.
• This question is quite distinct from the question as to jthe
relation between mental processes and physical processes. ^Hav-
ing abstracted from consciousness, we can conceive our mental
processes as energies linked with other types of energy in a
definite way. If our conative attitudes seem to make a dif-
ference to physiological states and in turn the latter to the
former, what is there, aside from our own bigotry, to prevent
the applying of our categories of causality and energy, however
difficult may be the exact measurement of the complex differ-
ences ? All that causality means, in our ignorance, is that one
set of processes make predictable differences to another set.
And if electricity can make definite differences to extended and
ponderable processes without being extended and ponderable,

THE CONCEPT OF CONSCIOUSNESS 133

why should not mind produce differences in what we call physical
energies, though the differences thus produced may not be
identical in kind with their antecedents? Such differences at
any rate the facts seem to indicate in the invariable sequences
which we observe between mental and physical processes.
This theory judges the existence of mental energies, as it does
radioactive, from the behavior of the processes with which we
deal, i-It holds that the conative system of tendency, bound up
somehow for the time being with the cerebral context as its
instrument or organ, is the immediate condition of consciousness.
It is this which must be brought into play either in solving its
own ideal problems or as the result of the shock brought by other
energies, intra- or extra-organic. In any case, as the fact of con-
sciousness is present throughout the whole field of introspective
experience, we do well to take it for granted in dealing with the
psychology of the self, with its continuities and discontinuities.
The nature of consciousness is a metaphysical rather than a psy-
chological problem.

CHAPTER VIII

THE CONCEPT OF CONSCIOUSNESS (Continued)

IF consciousness makes no causal difference to our energetic
processes, if the complexity of the associative organization, as
well as the nature of its constituent processes, the sensations
and ideas, depend upon development and structure, what
practical difference can consciousness make to our world?
In the first place, we have seen that this is really a new prob-
lem. What has been dealt with in the past, from Protagoras,
Augustine, and Descartes down, has been rather the contrast
between one set of processes, the conative processes, especially
as involved in knowledge, and the processes which seem more
external to the conscious ego. But if you take away from
the side of consciousness all that is energetic, is it not an abstrac-
tion? Yes, it is an abstraction in the sense that space is an
abstraction, but like space it must be treated as a fact of its
own kind. We have become acquainted with other realities,
which, while they are not energy and therefore can make no
causal difference to energetic centers, yet do make a definable
difference. We must rid ourselves of the prejudice that ener-
getic or causal difference is the only difference which facts
within reality can make to each other. There are differences
which do not involve quantitative equivalence, but which are
equally real. Space bears no causal relation to the energies
in space, and yet it makes a decided difference to these energies
that they must interact in space. Their actions do vary in a
certain statable way with the distance. Time I have identified
elsewhere with the chance element of the universe. Time
makes the difference of fluency or change at all. To what degree
and of what kind the fluency shall be, depends upon the struc-
tural character of reality. Hence, in trying to describe the
constancies or anticipations, which are based upon structure,

134

THE CONCEPT OF CONSCIOUSNESS 135

even in reducing the flow of process in general to a conven-
tional statement in terms of some one process, we may
come to overlook the presupposition which makes process
at all possible. The space character and the time character
each makes only one effective difference and throws upon the
energetic structure the responsibility for the diversity of facts
and changes.

The Pragmatic Difference of Consciousness

. So with consciousness : it makes only one difference to reality.
Under certain energetic conditions, it makes the difference of

^awareness. You might say that it is physiological and cona-
tive processes which make consciousness apparent, rather than
the opposite. For nature must first perfect her arrangements
before consciousness can make any apparent difference. And
this apparent difference is the difference of awareness. What
the awareness means, what character and value it has, depends
upon the energetic relations, always including the conative
system of tendencies as part of the situation. iThe processes
color consciousness, not consciousness the processes. Con-
sciousness itself is colorless. A certain kind of energetic dif-
ferentiation and a certain degree of energetic intensity become
sensations of color or tone, etc., when we are aware of them;
certain constructive or destructive changes become pleasure or
pain. A certain kind of associative or cumulative structure
becomes imaginative perspective, etc.

The usefulness of such a consciousness does not account
for its existence, but we can see how consciousness, being
real, can figure as a survival condition and how the type of
structure, which makes awareness possible, should be advanta-
gequs. A more efficient type of adjustment is made possible by
working in the light rather than in the dark. The structures
favor consciousness and in turn consciousness favors the struc-
tures. Adaptation as such is not a matter of consciousness,
as complicated adaptation does go on, both in human and infra-
human life, without consciousness. I But, with consciousness,
automatic adaptation becomes desire and purpose. Imagina-
tion and thought are added to reflex and instinctive reactions,
with greater complexity of structure. It "is the light which

136 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

lighteth every man that cometh into the world," but whether
it is color or tone, emotion or thinking, pleasure or pain, depends
not upon it, but upon the energetic conditions. /-'As space is
the precondition of externality and time of change, so conscious-
ness is the precondition of awareness.

What metaphysical difference does this awareness make to
our world? In what way is reality practically enriched or
altered because of consciousness? We can conceive the ener-
getic situations as the same though consciousness is subtracted.
We have also seen that the contexts of meaning, past and pres-
ent, logical and aesthetic, can exist without consciousness.
They must be acknowledged by the conscious moment. They
are not created by our awareness. What is added then to the
conative situation by consciousness? And what disappears
with the subtracting of consciousness? ttt seems clear that
without consciousness, we could not have value in the sense of
subjective significance. There could not be the sense of satis-
faction in the working out of the conative tendency. In a
non-conscious world we can conceive of a progress from a lesser
to a greater perfection in Spinoza's sense of greater organiza-
tion, more complete independence from external accidents,
greater coherence of parts, until a self-sufficient, self-dependent
whole is reached. But Spinoza is quite right that in such an
impersonal constitution there could be no value — no sense
of goodness and beauty. In an intellectual type of impersonal
world, we would have a logic machine grinding out certain re-
sults. In a material type of world there could still be selective
action, a differential taking account of stimuli, as the magnet
takes account of the loadstone, as the chemical elements take
account of each other in the compound, and respond by new
creative syntheses. But the intuition of movement, the rela-
tions of cognition and appreciation, would be lacking, for these
imply, beside the energy situations, the attribute of conscious-
ness. The category of work, energetic interlocking, could be
applied but not the category of realization. Conative tendency
could be there, and this could go off in the presence of certain
stimuli, as is the case with the physiological reflexes. iAdd
consciousness and instinct becomes impulse, conative tendency
becomes interest, with its tone of agreeableness or disagreeable-

THE CONCEPT OF CONSCIOUSNESS 137

ness according to its success or failure. As the ghosts of Hades
crowd to taste the blood of the sacrifices, so do the pale memo-
ries and tendencies crowd to get the vitalizing touch of a living
interest. i-Thus is the halo of value added to what otherwise
would be a mechanical and blind process. The specific color-
ing of the concrete values is still due to the processes — their
direction and complexity. What consciousness makes possible
is value at all. Homer's Iliad and Euclid's Geometry have
meaning connections, but value they have only as they figure
in the subjective moment, as taken account of by a living
interest.

The relation of interest is a dual relation. It requires two
terms for its statement, however immediate the situation may
be, and whether we take account of their existence or not. It
is consciousness which is simple, which knows no terms. ^ Inter-
est requires a conative constitution, on the one hand, and it
implies the shock of a stimulus, on the other hand. It is futile
to try to state the situation of interest in the absence of the
conative tendency. It would be Hamlet with Hamlet left
out.

The logical relation of knower and known is but one type of
{he conscious situation which we call interest. There is the
relation of appreciation as well as of cognition. ^Within this field
of interest, subject and object are locked in one selective reac-
tion ; they are functions of one context of experience, the sub-
ject indicating the organized conative system, the referent,
while the object indicates the content selected or emphasized,
the relatum — the whole situation being lit up, but not created
by consciousness.

I/Consciousness thus makes the difference between automatic
and significant activity. Without consciousness we could
have the ether waves and the retinal changes and the complex
cortical changes with complex adjustments, as in somnambu-
lism. Certain destructive organic changes might be going on,
but they could only be corrected, perhaps, by the extinction
of the particular individual and the building up of race instincts,
which is a costly and clumsy method at best. -With conscious-
ness, an infinitely greater degree of individual adjustment
becomes possible because of the awareness of the changes.

138 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

'The cumulative changes, made possible by a nervous system,
become cumulative meaning. '-Physiological structures become
pictures, and energetic interactions become significant rela-
tions. Thus past sensations and thinking become available
for present emergencies, making it possible for prospective con-
ative tendency to anticipate the future in a definite way, and
thus enabling us to act at a distance in space and in time,
instead of being dependent upon the present stimulus. Habit,
association, and memory are still physiological processes and
obey mechanical laws. It is their significance which has been
altered.

Consciousness thus makes the difference to the stream of
instinctive tendencies, that it can see its own flow, can become
aware of its own direction, and can feel the value of its fulfill-
ment or thwarting ; and, as it does so, can control its separate
impulses accordingly. ""It is not a link in the chain of causality,
interacting with the events, physical or mental, but by its
presence in the conative stream, the distinguishing of physical
and mental becomes possible. The whole flow of change is
transformed from mechanical causality to teleological causality.
It is more like a medium, in which the events travel, than like
a cause. It is not an epiphenomenon in the sense that it is a
by-product of mechanical changes. Rather, it is a fact over
and beyond the mechanical changes, which, under certain
conditions, makes them more than mechanical. It makes the
trend of conative tendency an ego.

I'We have seen that it is peculiarly in value situations that
the presence of consciousness is significant. These, indeed,
could not exist without consciousness. I But we must not sup-
pose on that account that value is created by consciousness.
The latter is but one factor in the situation, however indis-
pensable. ;; In order to have value, there must be, the fulfillment
of organized tendency in terms of its object. This presupposes
not only conative tendency, but the whole physiological machin-
ery of associative organization. It has been pointed out by
James, Dewey, Schiller, and others that values are creative
additions to our world. But it is not our awareness that creates
them. Little is known of the conditions of creativeness whether
as regards appreciation or thought. We know that a certain

THE CONCEPT OF CONSCIOUSNESS 139

set or attitude is necessary on the part of the will. Then we
must experiment within our material whether artistic or logical.
And if we work and meditate, something may happen. A new
insight may come. * But ideal creative conception, like biological
conception, takes place in the dark. -It is a gift from the
creative energy of the universe. The light of consciousness
but makes it appear to the individual and society. jWhile
consciousness, however, does not create value, it is equally
clear that value could not exist without it. Value implies
appreciation, the sense of realization, and this must be a con-
scious process.

While we have found the contribution of consciousness pecul-
iarly significant in the case of value, we must not assume
that value situations are the only ones in which consciousness
exists as an ingredient. ;We would all agree that wherever
there is attentip^i__thej^_js__ci2nsciousness. Now the selective
character of attention, its contribution of clearness,1 depends
upon organization. In the case of primary and active atten-
tion, the affective quality is apt to be strong. There is a vivid
consciousness of success and failure. But when attention
becomes routine, the value aspect tends to disappear, and the
process approximates the character of habit. We must also
remember that consciousness is by no means limited to the
comparatively small group of processes which can figure in
attention at any one time. We are aware of vast masses of
sensation from without and within, of impulses and associa-
tions, which we do not attend to, but which are nevertheless
part of the field of consciousness. The processes to which we
do not attend lack clearness and possibly differ in other ways
such as intensity and duration. For the most part, they are
indifferent, i.e. they possess no value, though sometimes they
may be distractions or possess a negative value. >This goes
to show, therefore, that such characteristics as clearness and
value are due to the converging and organization of tendencies.
They are not accounted for by merely calling them facts of
consciousness, though consciousness is a generic condition of
their existence.

1 In connection with attention see Titchener, "A Textbook of Psychology,"
1913, esp. pp. 276-284.

140 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

Consciousness is like Aristotle's form of the body,1 in so far
as it is inert as to the carrying on of bodily activity. It does
not figure as a cause in the process. It does not make the
engine go. v Nor is it the potential energy actualized, as Aristotle
supposed, since it is not statable as energy at all. It is a new
fact added. It makes a difference, however, both as to the
value and the control of processes. It makes possible prevision
instead of mere cumulative habit, as well as illumines imme-
diate value. -Significant activity, in other words, requires two
attributes or independent variables to describe it — energy and
consciousness. It is a mistake to suppose that our ideals are
mere coruscations or halos, byplays to the going on of energy.
They are energies, tendencies, aware of their direction and with
a complex structural machinery in the way of association and
habit at their disposal. That the organism is relighted, even
as a candle in the night, can be easily understood, if we attend
to the energetic conditions on the one hand, and consciousness
on the other.

The pathological phenomena fall as easily under the account
of structure and awareness as the normal. Such phenomena as
lapses of memory, alternating selves, multiple selves, etc.,
can easily be met on this theory as due to physiological dis-
organization, not to disorganization of consciousness. How-
ever dissociated or split the associative systems of tendencies
may be, consciousness remains identical.
/Since consciousness as awareness is a condition of all value,
it cannot decide as between values ; it cannot, as consciousness,
legislate between higher and lower values or pick the permanent
from the transient. They are alike conscious ; and, therefore,
their different claims must be decided on the ground of organi-
zation, not on the ground of awareness. It makes the realiza-
tion of tendency significant, both immediately and in perspec-
tive, past and future;*' but it has nothing to say as to what
tendencies should prevail; which are valid or invalid values.
Since objects are pleasing and beautiful in relation to our

1 In the Aristotelian spirit, Santayana has tried to show how consciousness,
though inert, furnishes the meaning and value of process. But Santayana fails to
distinguish between consciousness and psychological processes. The latter are
not inert. See " Reason in Common Sense," Gh. IX.

THE CONCEPT OF CONSCIOUSNESS 141

tendencies, and since our whole universe of tendencies may
be low or abnormal, and yet be consistent within itself, con-
sistent art or poetry or life, but low, we need another dimension
besides energetic tendency and consciousness to decide what
values or ideals shall prevail, which is the seeming and which
is the real direction, if the universe is to have ultimate signifi-
cance. It may be the wrong meaning, the wrong scale of values,
the wrong pleasures and pains, a low universe of appreciation.
If so, they must be eliminated and new universes of value be
made to prevail. >,We must, therefore, assume besides energy
and consciousness a formal attribute. The universe must be
so constituted as to have such an objective form as to condition
survival of individual streams of tendency, as well as social
conventions, in order that new and higher universes may pre-
vail in the long run. Consciousness, as awareness, does not
explain any particular value or meaning, nor does it determine
the validity of values and meanings. It is a general precondi-
tion without which there could not be value at all.

The Distribution of Consciousness

We must say a word about the distribution of consciousness
or its place in the cosmos as a whole. The distribution of
consciousness, so far as psychology is concerned, is a compara-
tively simple matter. It is a question of evidence; and we
can get introspective evidence of consciousness only when we
have associative memory. This already presupposes complex
organic conditions. Whether memory can be present below
the grade where we find a nervous system is a matter of evi-
dence, too, and should not be settled a priori.
.Within the range of our own experience, we find many degrees
of attention. These degrees depend upon associative organi-
zation, or the complexity of the conative system, consciousness
being present and undivided in all the stages. The question
arises : Can there be awareness below the level of associative
memory and meaning? We can at least find transition links
toward such a state. We are sometimes aware of having been
dimly conscious, as in going to sleep or in just waking, without
being able to recall any ideas. This dimmer awareness is here
continuous with ideational awareness, and so comes to mean

142 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

something as a background. The epileptic and the somnambu-
list respond to stimuli as though they had sensory consciousness,
even when they furnish no evidence in the way of memory.
The first conscious states of the infant must be such a dim
awareness without meaning or "knowledge about." The dog,
and still more, the pigeon and the frog, seem to react on various
sense stimuli as though they had sensations, even after then*
hemispheres have been removed, though the evidence shows
that there is no reference to past experience, and therefore, no
meaning. There may also be an immediate consciousness of
agreeable and disagreeable in connection with conative realiza-
tion and its cumulative disposition below the level of associative
memory. At any rate, the same fundamental type of organic
reactions, expansive and contractive, are present. Where
such awareness stops it would be impossible to say, and for
purposes of continuity, we may find it convenient to assume
it clear down. Such awareness, where the conditions differ
radically from our own must be problematic, a mere x as far
as knowledge is concerned, virtually split off from practical
purposes. It is consistent, however, with the fact which we
have tried to bring out above, that the meaning of the aware-
ness, what sort of meaning, and whether it means anything at
all, is due to energetic structure.

This is very different from supposing that there are feelings
outside of consciousness. That is mere nonsense, j Feelings
imply consciousness. The question is whether consciousness
as an ontological presupposition exists below even the dim-
mest or most confused processes of experience as we know it.
There is no easy line psychologically ; and logically it is simpler
to assume the presupposition of consciousness than to derive
it from non-conscious processes. It is easier, for epistemological
purposes, to suppose that consciousness is a constant, rather
than that it butts in; that it shines upon the just and the
unjust, the simple and the complex, and in all kinds of weather,
and that the difference in its effectiveness is due, not to it, but
to the energetic conditions in the universe. For meaning struc-
tures differ from non-meaning structures not only in conscious-
ness, but in organization. And only in the latter respect do
meaning structures differ from other meaning structures.

THE CONCEPT OF CONSCIOUSNESS 143

u<5onsciousness may be universal, as time and space are uni-
versal in the world of energetic relations, though we can only
know it or have direct evidence of it where it makes a differ-
ence. We do not know it as split off, any more than we know
anything else which is isolated. The question what conscious-
ness is, if there is nothing but consciousness, is as sensible as
the question what difference space makes if there is nothing
but space. Attributes of reality are " not divided by a hatchet."
It is not necessary to regard them as more split off in nature
than we find them. Consciousness does seem to be split off
in our own personal history, so far as making any difference
under certain organic conditions is concerned, as in dreamless
sleep. It may be the same in connection with the simpler
processes of nature. At any rate, to suppose consciousness
existent, even when the conditions for its effectiveness are
wanting, waiting, as it were, for the conditions to appear, or
to be made effective through the conditions, steers clear of
the question of origin, and so greatly simplifies our metaphysi-
cal problem. i-Its effectiveness, we have seen, consists merely
in contributing awareness. / I can see only two ways of account-
ing for the presence of consciousness. It must either be a
constant — as I have tried to show above — or it must be
created outright, when we have evidence of it. Materialism
amounts to the latter view. Moreover, this miracle would
have to occur not only once and for all, but would have to be
repeated every time and everywhere that consciousness is
known to appear. Such a heaping up of miracles is hardly
consistent with the modern scientific spirit.

It behooves us to remember at any rate that our blindness
and dogmatism is no measure of the distribution of conscious-
ness. To some of the Cartesians, animals below man were
mere unconscious automata, and they could proceed with good
conscience in their vivisectional experiments. Later, the higher
vertebrates were conceded mental reactions similar to those of
man. For the most part, the tendency has been to ignore
types of mind different from those which we find in the higher
vertebrates. Comparative psychology, however, has shown
that the higher insects show intelligent behavior which, while
different, is not inferior in complexity to that of the vertebrates.

144 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

The instinctive intuition of the bee shows possibilities, in the
way of social organization and material manipulation, which
parallel the higher achievements of abstract intelligence. The
architecture of the bee from the point of view of economy and
adaptedness would in the series of intellectual development
presuppose the highest tools of mathematical science. ^ As
opposed to the dogmatic theory that intelligent behavior
stops with the disappearance of the nervous system in the animal
series, we have the recent investigations by Jennings and
others which show that the behavior of microorganisms indi-
cates cumulative learning by experience in the way of habit
formations. In the case of plant life, we find a series of increas-
ing complexity of behavior which is more and more attracting
our admiration. While in our own life the functions of nutri-
tion, respiration, and propagation are conscious only in unusual
states (though they contribute importantly to the total ccenses-
thesis of well-being and value), perhaps "no such eclipse occurs
in plants, and their lower consciousness may therefore be all
the more lively. With nothing to do but to eat and drink the
light and air with their leaves, to let their cells proliferate, to
feel their rootlets draw the sap, is it conceivable that they should
not consciously suffer if water, light, and air are suddenly
withdrawn? or that when the flowering and fertilization which
are the culmination of their life take place, they should not
feel their own existence more intensely and enjoy something
like what we call pleasure in ourselves?" 1 So Fechner, one
of the greatest of scientists, thought ; and even though his
account may so far have to be credited to the poetry of science,
his intuition, based as it is on scientific analogy, is at least
more reasonable than materialistic dogmatism. Certain it is
that in plant behavior we find selection and adaptation which
resemble and even rival operations which we know to be
conscious in the higher animals. Perhaps with new tools
and scientific patience, the future may prove Fechner's vision
to be something more than analogy. With Fechner, we have
to consider the possibility that, just as functions, which exist
in isolation in inorganic nature, such as sound and light, are
synthesized into the sensations of an individual organism, so

1 James' account of Fechner, "A Pluralistic Universe," pp. 166 and 167.

THE CONCEPT OF CONSCIOUSNESS 145

there may be a more comprehensive synthesis where our one-
sided perceptions and valuations are taken up together with
those of other structures which are comparatively strange to
us, into a more adequate ensemble. For Fechner's scientific
mind, the earth-soul and the hierarchy of cosmic organization
furnish the possibility of such higher systems. For simpler,
but equally devout souls, practical and emotional needs have
opened the curtain to a Presence with an infinite capacity for
sympathy and companionship, for whom all our hairs are
counted, and without whose tender solicitude no sparrow falls
to the ground. At any rate, we must confront the possibility
that consciousness and mind are not limited to our skulls, or
to skulls like ours.

Some Other Problems
chief difficulty, as regards the presence of consciousness,

has come from regarding consciousness as private or individual.
If we regard consciousness as one and undivided, one character,
the same everywhere, as space is the same, we shall avoid this
stumbling block. We do not suppose that there must be as
many real spaces as there are bodies. Real space has only
one effective character, binding upon all alike so far as they are
individual energies. It makes the difference of distance. So
consciousness does not differ from moment to moment or from
one conscious being to another. So far as there is privacy or
opaqueness it lies in individual organization, not in conscious-
ness. If there is one conscious being in the universe, there-
fore, consciousness is as real as though there were billions, since
consciousness is not a matter of quantity. And, if we find it
difficult to think of consciousness as split off, we must remem-
ber it only seems split off from the individual point of view.
In the whole it is really present as a constant property. In
the total universe, moreover, even if we find it difficult to im-
agine consciousness in the abstract, we can imagine some indi-
vidual as possessing the structure for significant awareness at
any one time, even on the theory of chances. And, if this
does not satisfy us in the changes of cosmic weather, we can
have recourse to the guardian of Israel who "shall neither
slumber nor sleep." The constancy of energetic conditions

146 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

for such a being we can now conceive as possible. As the
simplest organic being, the unicellular organism, has an indef-
inite life, so we may imagine the highest or perfectly organized
being as having the conditions for permanent life and conscious-
ness in himself. It is we half-men that struggle. Such a
being we shall have reason, no doubt, to assume, on ethical
and religious grounds. If so, it will greatly aid our imagina-
tion, even if it does not increase the coerciveness of our logic.
The need for a permanent consciousness might even count as
one of the arguments for such a being, if unconvinced of the
possibility of such permanency in any other way. Better such
an assumption than the heaping up of meaningless miracles.

^"And why should we assume that consciousness is subjective
in the sense of private? Whether facts are subjective or not
must be determined on other grounds than their being con-
scious. My being conscious of facts does not prove them sub-
jective. My fellow man, music, color, etc., do not become
subjective because I am conscious of them. In that case all
facts would become subjective. The test of subjectivity or
objectivity is whether they can be shared by several observers.
Those are subjective processes which can be facts for one
observer only. Those are objective which can be shared by
several observers. Thus pain is subjective, in so far as I can
not put another observer in a position to have the same process ;
while color processes must be objective, because another ob-
server can share them as much as he can share any object. I
may for certain purposes, mechanical purposes for example,
ignore the color properties and select the geometrical properties,
but that is another story, and has nothing to do with objective
reality. The survival value of treating such properties as
color and sound as objective would of itself be a strong argu-
ment for their objective existence.

^-The matter of subjectivity after all is largely a matter of
degree. c The closer we come to similarity of conditions, both
of situation and individual structure, the nearer we come to a
sharing not only of logical meanings, but of feelings and emo-
tions. We come to have common sympathies. It is customary
to speak of images as private, as contrasted with perceptions,
and yet, as Le Bon and others have pointed out, images, espe-

THE CONCEPT OF CONSCIOUSNESS 147

cially visual images, furnish the most effective social means of
persuasion and common action. They furnish the bond of the
mob. If imagery were as private as the psychologists try to
tell us, poetry would be well-nigh impossible.

Psychology as an introspective science, moreover, has no
monopoly of consciousness. In fact, it does not have occasion
to deal with consciousness in the abstract. ^What it studies
is the laws and tendencies of conative processes, processes in
part, or part of the time, conscious, i.e. issuing into conscious-
ness under certain conditions or presupposed as mental con-
stitution by the conscious moment.

«^Tliis theory furnishes a decided advantage from the point of
view of accounting for perception and knowledge. .By doing
away with the superstition of the privacy of consciousness and
showing its identical character everywhere, it reinstates the
world of energetic continuities which has proved so fruitful
a conception in science. uThis theory recognizes privacy, but it
is a relative and explicable privacy. It is due, not to conscious-
ness, but to individual variation of structure, to unique ensem-
bles of tendencies, which consciousness serves merely to reveal.
If such uniqueness is a drawback to communication, it is the
raw material of progress. Moreover, it bears close relations
to the race life all the while. It is a deviation merely from the
common race stock, the continuity with which must make its
originality significant. It is not a charmed circle. This
conception of consciousness does not indeed solve the problem
of knowledge. But, inasmuch as for this theory consciousness
becomes merely a universal postulate, so far as the knowing
function is concerned, therefore consciousness no longer com-
plicates the problem, which now becomes one of energetic
processes and their relations. This problem is a twofold one.
It must explain on the one hand how one energy can know
another, whether differing in complexity or in kind, and on
the other hand how our energetic purposes can know realities
which are not energy, including consciousness itself. This
problem has been dealt with elsewhere.1

This conception of consciousness greatly simplifies the

1 See "Truth and Reality," Macmillan, 1911, Chapter XIV, "Pragmatic

Realism."

148 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

problem of energy. It destroys the old conceptual cleavage
between mind and body, or physical energy on the one hand
and psychological processes on the other, by making conscious-
ness a fact independent of energy. Nature knows no cleavage
of energetic interactions. Why should we, by our concepts,
put asunder what nature has joined together? The scientific
theorist may now go ahead and simplify as he pleases, irrespec-
tive of consciousness. All we ask is that his conceptual model
shall meet the energetic facts.

Is consciousness diaphanous? If this means that conscious-
ness makes no difference at all, that processes are the same when
they are conscious as when they are not conscious, that we are
the same asleep as awake, then the question is absurd. But
if the statement that consciousness is diaphanous merely
means to emphasize that consciousness does not make or alter
the energies of things; that no properties of things are con-
stituted by consciousness; that the only difference it makes
is awareness, which is not a causal relation, — if this is what
is meant, it agrees with this theory. L On the other hand, while
consciousness does not make properties or structures, it is a
general precondition of our interest in them and their value
for us.

The question has been raised by a certain school of idealists
as to whether the universe would vanish if there were no con-
sciousness. Why should it? I do not vanish as a set of ener-
gies when I am asleep, not even when no one takes account of
me. I have no evidence of consciousness — and evidence would
mean memory, and so awareness of the meaning type — during
seven hours of last night, and no one perceived me, and yet I
can go on with my plans of yesterday. Moreover, there was
change and development in the meantime, of which the waking
moment must take account. The world looks different from
what it did at the time of my going to sleep. Problems have
taken on a new meaning. So nature, too, could have rhythmic
pulses. Yet in its waking moments, it would know it was
real in its sleep, and could furnish evidence in the way of changes
which must be interpolated between its waking moments, and
which do not happen when they are taken account of, but must
be taken account of because they have happened. Of course,

THE CONCEPT OF CONSCIOUSNESS 149

if the whole world were asleep, the sleep of Endymion would
have no significance, though real nevertheless if conditioning
his waking up.

Every theory of reality must meet certain practical problems.
And the question probably has suggested itself before now:
What becomes of immortality on this theory? To this I will
answer that the problem of immortality is the same on this
as on any other theory. It can be neither proved nor dis-
proved by theories. To say that everything is experience, irre-
spective of evidence, does not help the problem of immortality
one whit. The facts of transmutation and the demand for
individual continuity would still remain. As individual im-
mortality means, not the simplicity of the soul nor the immor-
tality of mere consciousness, but the carrying over, perhaps,
of memories, or at least of tendencies, the problem becomes an
energetic one. /.Individual immortality would depend upon
the continuity of energetic conditions, not upon consciousness.
It would be difficult to show that we constantly possess aware-
ness during the sleeping and waking of this life even. More-
over, energetic continuity need not mean the gross continuity
of the body. Race continuity involves only one specific form
of energy, and a small portion at that. So it may be with
individual continuity. If we can carry tendency over, tendency
to think and feel and act, to enjoy beauty and feel sympathy
with our world, we ought to be satisfied. This is the net result
of it all. This view, moreover, would fit in with the church
doctrine of the resurrection of the body, so far as energetic
continuity is concerned. It would not include the clothes
or shoes or Gabriel's trumpet. But these, after all, are not an
essential part of the conception. The life of a disembodied
consciousness would be a pretty ghost-like affair. The world
of energy must furnish the principle of individuation.
/>8ince all that is necessary to bring back personality is the
presence of certain energetic conditions, with the light of con-
sciousness thrown on. them, the problem of immortality be-
comes at least simplified. The fact that we have not been
able to trace such energetic continuity of personality as yet, is
no argument. We were slow in tracing biological continuity
experimentally. We have only within comparatively recent

150 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

times found out something of the character of electricity and
radium and the Brownian movement. The energy underlying
personal continuity may be much subtler than these, and the
favorable occasion for taking account of it, in its new state,
may be much more difficult to find. Perhaps the spontaneous
trance, as in the case of Mrs. Piper, may furnish such an oppor-
tunity. This remains to be established. At any rate, we
have no right to assume that a certain gross energetic condition
to which we are accustomed, is the only condition under which
consciousness can appear. We have discovered a multiplicity
of conditions under which electricity can appear. To be
sure, these are only analogies, but I have shown at least that
this view is not hostile to the conception of permanent person-
ality. What really is the place of man and God in the universe
must be established by the evidence of human experience and
not by a priori reasoning. And they must have a place in the
universe if human experience in its progressive evolution con-
tinues to require them. The realities of the ego, of God and
immortality, remain what they are, on any theory. If the
evidence proves that they must be, then they can be.

Conclusion. — This view of consciousness is self-consistent ;
it is economic in that it assumes consciousness as a constant
and thus avoids the problem of origin; it is also economic in
avoiding the duplication of structure involved in separating
physiological and conscious processes. It meets all the require-
ments of biological evolution, and of normal and abnormal
psychology. It accounts for the intermittent character of
awareness. It meets the practical demands as well as any other
theory. It does not prove them, for this must be done by
evidence, but it makes them possible.

CHAPTER IX
KNOWING MINDS

JN tmngJboJoiow-the-aetf. we must recognize in the first
place that our concern must be with the finite self- and its proc-
esses. We cannot even conjecture a mind different from ours.
Such a mind must turn out in the last analysis to be an abstrac-
tion from our own experience. The idealistic absolute is
merely our own ideal of a completed knowledge, not a different
mind.

In the second place, the method pursued must be naturalistic.
We must strive to know a self as we try to define a chemical
element — through its conduct, not through a priori considera-
tions. We would not say that the self is its behavior, any
more tb.an.twe would say that a chemical element is its behavior.
It is not only the way it now behaves, but the way it can behave
in all possible situations. The self is what it must be taken
as in its behavior, by itself and by. others, in various contexts,
physical and social, especially the latter. It is not something
over and above the propSFHSPBffTffiown in situations ; the
essence appears completely, given the proper conditions. There
is no substance except energy. The self can be as truly known
as a chemical element in the tests of various situations. It has
its breaking point in the stresses and strains of experience as
surely as cast iron; its melting point as surely as gold; its
freezing point as surely as water ; its explosion point as surely
as dynamite ; its point of confluence with other selves as surely
as wine mixes with water; it separates from other selves as
surely as oil refuses to mix with alcohol. Habits, motives,
characters are but expectancies of varying complexity, which
we can have as regards the self with reference to definite situa-

151

152 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

tions. Of these situations, the social situations are by far the
most important — the only ones in fact which would make

self-consciousness in the first instance possible. But, secondarily
at least, physical situations f too, count. In them we learn our
strength and courage and many other properties. Th

in any case is what we must take it as being in conduct. It_
has spontaneity, u we must &CgH8wTe355^P5pT5Rfiity. JJLJa.

a mechanism, lust in so far as we can treat it that way. We
™"fffti Iff*1*" •*? t'fllffl thfi mlttd nK fc^YM/m. and not as the epiphe-
nomenon of material processes on the one hand or of a tran-
scendent substance on the other. We must start with facts,
not with dogmas. Its properties indeed are different from those
of material things. ItTHas no "gravTtational mass, .but neither
has electricity. Its propprt-ip-s flffej jfl different situations.
But so do those of any physical thing. The visuaTprSpeTrties
of the diamond don't cut glass. While difficult sometimes
to calculate, owing to lack of organization or owing to complexity
of motives, still its Conduct is largely predictable. Human
institutions of credit and confidence are built on such pre-
dictability. Taken in the average such predictability becomes
well-nigh absolute. Where the self differs radically from a
physical thing is in the fact that consciousness is superadded
to its activities and so gives them meaning and value for the
self. But while this adds subjective significance, it does not
prevent us from taking account of the properties of the self,
past and present. And the property to have mercy is just
as much of a property as the solidity of steel.

Like radium, mind is not as yet known to exist in an isolated
state. Wpjkrmw mindr for certain at least, only in connection
with physiologic^,), prncp-ssp.s. though we may hope for more
corroborative evidence of the existence of mind after death.
But while mind exists in connection with physiological processes,
we know it nevertheless as pure ; and we know it better than
we Know ifflYtftfafi d** When" we take account of our own
meaning or try to understand another living mind or try to get
the significance of a poem, in either case, nerves don't get mixed
up with ideas, any more than the letters on the page get con-
fused with the meaning we try to decipher. We know mind
as it is. Whether we know its existence apart from certain

KNOWING MINDS 153

physiological conditions or nnf,T itself wa frflQW as c^ear and dis-
tinct a fact of its own kind, with its definite internal *a& welT
as external relations.

II

This is as true in knowing; other minds as in knowing our
own. The knowledge of other selves has been confused by
two theories. One is the theory of analogy, viz, that we know
other selves only by analng^a.1 infpronr^ bnnrd npnn tlir 'inii
laritv of other bodies, and their behavior, with »"*• nwnj Ty_b\lpi
JLis only our own mind that we know immHiatfily This
theory confuses the problem of causality with the problem of
knowledge! it is true that our minds must make differences
to our own bodies and their physical environment before their
behavior can be overt to others and vice versa. But it is not
true ordinarily that in knowing we argue back from bodily
structure to mind. Man had composed great epics, laws, and
religions, built all the fundamental social institutions, before
he knew there was such a thing as a nervous system. And
even now the knowledge of the relation of mind and body is
decidedly problematic and not to be compared with our knowl-
edge of the mind's own relations, as we know it in logic, psy-
chology, and ethics. To be sure we sometimes start from struc-
ture in dealing with lower animal minds, but this is just the
beginning of hypothesis, not real inference as to the mind's
own nature. This must be understood through conduct — its
intelligence and docility, quite independent of the presence of
a nervous system. It certainly seems absurd to suppose that
men should first study the connection of mental states and
bodily expression in themselves and then read a mind back of
the expression and structure of others, — and this before they
know anything about the connection of mind and body in them-
selves or have even distinguished mind from body. It seems
pretty clear that they start the other way ; that they firsTteam
.to recognize purposive conduct in others, before" they become
aware of the relation of mind and conduct in themselves. They
learn to associate emotions and attitudes with expression in
others before they are conscious of expression in themselves.

The other theory is the mystical ._tb,ejory. It argues for the

154 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

immediacy of the knowledge of other minds without reference
to interaction or behavior, ffie immediate^j-cknowledge other
selves and that is all. Such acknowledgement is based upon
no inference, implicit or explicit. It permits of no genetic
analysis. Now this theory is certainly nearer true than the
previous, from which it is a reaction. The knowledge of
other selves may be regarded as immediate as that of our own.
We know ourselves, as we know others, through the situations
upon which we react. But this is quite different fromjioldmg
that we have a mystic knowledge of ourselves in the abstract
oj^of others in the jjbstiacL7 In the abstract our significance
equals zero. The knowledge of other selves is neither a matter
of analogical mierence nor of mystical appreciation but the
JioTraty^ay of reading conduct. And as social adjustment is a
centrifugal process, it is natural that we should have formulated
our own significance in terms of social situations — of social
approval and disapproval, before we began to formulate the
relation of social situations to our own ideals. The learning
process is at first a purely objective process. A boy friend of
three was confronted with a small misdemeanor. He recognized
by the situation that it was a wrongness. He steadily main-
tained that he had not done it. His father sternly and sadly
said, " Bobby, are you telling me a lie ? " He was finally brought
round to the right point of view with his mother's assistance
and owned his act, with the solemn impression that the serious
thing about it was telling a lie. The next day he astonished his
parents by adding to an answer which he made "and it is not a
lie." Through one tragic social context he had learned the
significance not only of a word but of a social relation. It is
safe to say that he did not compare the parent's bodily ex-
pression with his own.

In the progress of experience, language as an artificial ex-
, flression ofjftJfld^ with its complex network ofrelations, largely
takes the place of concrete situations for knowing minds.
And our koewi»g~ettF awn_mind, past and present, as well as
knowing othejjniads, becomes the immediate recognition of the
meaning of the language situations, until in the technical dis-
ciplines concrete imagery very largely drops out in our reading
of meanings. The matrix of language, with its artificial equiva-

KNOWING MINDS 155

lents for things and relations, becomes the social correlate of
our communication and understanding of minds, not brain
cells and association fibers. And logic, geometry, and ethics as
sciences of social mind relations reached a high perfection as
sciences before neural physiology was born. In social com-
munication, what we are immediately concerned with is words,
conduct — not brain states. In talking with an individual,
as in reading a book, we are concerned not with causes and
effects — the producing of the spoken or written symbols
and their reaching our, or the other party's, sensorium. We
are concerned with the interpretation of the symbols. The
words are immediately associated with certain meanings;
and our attention is fixed on the meanings, not on the instru-
ments. As the ivy clings to the material framework which
supports it, so do our meanings in every joint cling to lan-
guage, only the meanings make their own framework as the
nautilus builds its chambers.

While it is true that in understanding other selves we are
dealing with the gr>m'flj mf""*"" ** ^rrjpiflg0 «^ minings, still
this does not prove that brain processes, nerves, vocal chords,
air waves and ears or eyes do not mediate causally between
selves in communicating with each other. The teleological
explanation and articulate acknowledgment of meaning by
meaning would not be possible, in our sense world at least, if
the communicating minds were not part of the causal nexus

of the intervening world.

/. ..c .•«.- *
III

A great deal of mystery has been thrown about the_dual
nature of the self by traditional psychological theory. JH^ is
supposed that there is an absolute and invariable relation
between tne Jsmwet and the ^?LQi^>'or!Toii8eJames>s phrase-
ology, the 7 and the^me. This is true not only Q£ the old
rationalistic psychology with its metaphysical soul, but it
is true of recent treatments. Says "V^undt : "Every ex-
perience contains two inseparable factors — objects of ex-
perience and the experiencing subject." l And Ebbinghaus:
"Wherever thoughts and sensations are experienced, this sub-

iWundt, " Definition der Psychologic, " fhilosophische Studien, 1895.

156 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

jective bearer to which they adhere, also becomes directly
conscious in them and through them, in the same way as they
themselves."1 And even James: "It is obvious that if
things are to be thought in relation, they must be thought to-
gether or in one something, be that something ego, psychosis,
state of consciousness, or whatever you please." 2 This
something to be sure is a "a spiritual something." Still its
externality to the empirical situation is implied. When I
try to make clear to myself what this simple bearer is which
is constant in all the states and logically distinct from them,
it seems to be nothing else than the abstract fact of conscious-
ness itself. This certainly is constant and simple and accom-
panies all our conscious states. It is also separable from them,
as mental processes need not be always conscious.

If what is meant is that all experience involves the sub-
jfeffi3jbject relation or is representative, certainly some doubt
may be thrown Irom the side of the facts. When we think
we of course always presuppose the subject-object relation,
but is this true also of the simpler perceptual stage of ex-
perience? Could a creature, depending upon impressions
and upon learning by habit without any images, say I ? This
does not seem likely, because there is no conscious context,
which assimilates. In all experience^ too, thejre,jnust be a
beginning, a bare "awareness of" without any "knowledge
about," i.e. without any associative context to react, where
our experience is the light or the pain rather than has it. I do
not see how such experience could have the consciousness of
"two inseparable factors, objects of experience and experiencing
subject." In my own experience in waking up gradually after
having been struck by lightning and snowed under in a storm on
Grays Peak, I could remember afterwards when I was a mass
of pain and discomfort with no associations suggested in the
way of danger or death. I could remember having seen the
form of a man moving down the mountain side. But it was
not until some time afterward that the perceptual picture
suggested man and a futile cry for help and not till long after-
wards that the perception suggested my companion and that

1 Ebbinghaus, " Grundziige," Vol. I, p. 10.
1 "Principles of Psychology," Vol. II, p. 277.

KNOWING MINDS 157

the scene itself came back to me. There was certainly a period
there of pure perception, while the associative context was as
paralyzed as my bodily movements. It would seem that there
is a simpler state of consciousness than the I and me relation
— the state of bare awareness, which, of course, is not broken
up except by a more complex consciousness, which reflects
upon it. Leaving aside, however, the question of the univer-
sality of the subject-object consciousness, what does it mean
when we do have it? And is it such a mystery? ,

The mystery of the subject-object relation seems to disappear
wheiiwe ISiTng a little psvchologjfiflil p"Qljr°ic. *«. iSsrs- j^y_
stractm^Trom consciousness as bare awareness, we must make
clear to ourselves what we mean by the subject-object relation
in the concrete; and then we shall see that it is a selective
context responding to a specific content — the datum. The
quality of muness is a f^Bfit^011 °f ^ne df>^ilTrn"^>p!^nff"fffli[|Mt§fl
byThis individual interest. In other words. J-.Q say f,his is
I mv obiect of consciousness and to say I am interested in this
objecj, are two different ways of*saying tup samp, thing — The
I or subject in this relation is the active associative context,
which we call interest, solicited by or striving to find its object,
the me. In order to get rid of ages of false association we may
call. this nnnfoygt. t.hp fp.ffifp.n^ and the datum which is selected

^the relatum. iNow my contention is that there is no absolute
or constant relation between the selective coiiTexl, thy YufUfWill,
and me selected objecting retdlUWl. " OR the contrary, tne
cfistmction is relative to point of view and relative to time. In
the first place, II is relative to point 01 view. This may be true
within the same physical individual, as in the case of the divided
self. In deliberation, the point of view shifts while the systems
seem exclusive and constant. Now one system is tried out
with reference to its antagonistic systems. And again the
activity shifts to another system with its scale of values. But
the struggle is precisely between coexisting and conflicting
points of view. There is of course some common and constant
group of tendencies which figures in the various systems and
which accounts for the shifting of attention. It is this common
group of more or less explicit tendencies which gives rise to
the feeling of outside push as regards the process of delibera-

158 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

tion. The systems in intense moral struggle may coexist an-
tagonistically for some time — each with a strong individual
consciousness, and each struggling for the place of mastery,
now one, now the other occupying the focal place -^ the lower
taking the higher captive, the higher in turn summoning its
energies against the lower, each very much alive and strug-
gling for existence. In insanity we have cases of actual disrup-
tion of the various systems, when a man feels himself to be not
one but many — thoroughly bewildered in the shifting and
many-headed focus, as to which is I rather than the other.
In [every case of social communication where one system of
meanings strives to understand another, the relation of referent
and relatum is reciprocal and a matter of point of view.

Not only is the relation of I and me relative as between
coexisting systems, internal or social, with their respective
I"1™"*!! rf T'foTT' But the same associates may be part, now of
the referent and now of the relatum, in the one personal history.
In recalling a forgotten name, we use the meaning to find the
name. The system of associations with its leading is the
referent, the name the relatum. But having gotten the name,
we reverse the process and use the name with its larger context
to fix the meaning. It is my purpose to open a refractory
door. .This system of tendencies, thejrejferen^ hunts about fqr_
means, the relatum. "But in trying to solve the door situation,
the purpose becomes aware of its own vagueness and limitations.
It thus reverses itself in a measure; the door-consciousness
with its associations defines the purpose to open and both are
taken up into the larger context which was implicit in the pro-
cedure — getting what I wanted in the room, etc. The relation
of I and me then is not a constant or absolute relation! "i'here
is no more mystery about the I than aoouf the me. What
figures one moment as part of the tension of the apperceiving
factor may figure the next moment as part of the tension of
the apperceived. Th^y a.r^ h^tji functions of a more or less
definite system of tendencies which strives to realize itself and
which we may call the self in the inclusive sense.

If this theory is true, it should follow as a corollary, that
self-consciousness, i.e. consciousness of the I and me type,
should be prominent , in proportion to the activity of attention,

KNOWING MINDS 159

being particularly obtrusive in the moments of embarrassment
and frustration, while approaching the vanishing point with
the fluency of the ongoing of consciousness, when the felt
unity radiates in all directions of the prevailing purpose. This
seems actually carried out by the facts of experience. It is
when the developing purpose is brought to halt, is balked for
the time being, that the consciousness of meaning and datum,
referent and relatum, becomes painfully strong. On the other
hand, when the flow is uninterrupted, when the purpose is
absorbed in the transitions from phase to phase, whether the
fascination be intellectual, practical or aesthetic, the dualism of
I and me approaches its vanishing point until lost in the mystic
trance — the passive, coalescent state of attention.

Hume in speaking of the selfas a "bundle of perceptions "

fills Tt TjjffLJjinmiinTi ftf thf* Pi^T"i"> ^p^^pr- nf t.hf> pfftTftnt.

factor in the sub j ect-jobject -relation . The self, whenever we
are really awake, is an active bundle of more or less systematized
tendencies striving to appropriate or adapt itself to an. external
context, the datum. It is the latter context that has the
stubborn perceptual character. The self is not a bundle of
perceptions. It is a bundle of tendencies, leadings, purposive
striving. This is the substantial core of the ego, but it is a
shifting, moving core, an organization which comes to conscious-
ness through conflict, not a blank entity which is merely ex-
ternally related to certain objects. The perceptions, whether
internal or external, arejhe facts taken account of — the, me.
You can't have an outside without an inside ; and Hume l
made the self all outside. You must add to the content factor
an active apperceiving factor.

While it is true, moreover, that the process of knowing always
implies one context added to anotKer. in an empirical situation,
we must not neglect the unique relation of the factors involved.
The addition is not a mer* Tffrtif"""0^ ftdditi^n, but one of crea-
tive synthesis, analogous to chemical addition ralKeT"TKanTtb
mathematical. This creative, addi'tir"1 VQ tVlp 11niflVl? relation
of interest. There is nothing to show that it alters the char-
acteTTJftEelactors — the object known or the context knowing
— in other ways. While there is some doubt as to whether the

1 "Treatise on Human Nature," Vol. I, Pt. IV, § 6.

160 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

selective reaction, which we call attention, intensifies the data
emphasized, the qualities and relations of the data remain the
same. We do not create them by taking account of them. The
cat does not create the king by looking at him. Nor does he
add a cubit to his stature. What is added by the interest
rpla+mn ifl pnhjpr.f.iw filpa.mp.HR and significance.

The difference between the two factors in the interest rela-
tion cannot be resolved into the greater or less permanency
of the associates involved in each case. This seems to be the
theory of William James: "The two collections, first of its
cohesive, and, second, of its loose associates, inevitably come to
be contrasted. We call the first collection the system of
external realities, in the midst of which the room, as 'real/
exists; the other we call the stream of our internal thinking,
in which, as a 'mental image,' it for a moment floats. The
room thus gets counted twice over." 1 As a matter of fact,
the apperception context need not be less cohesive than the
context taken account of. It may be, and often is, the more
permanent of the two. The meaning or attitude may remain
constant though the object changes. Our loyalty may remain
through the objective vicissitudes of a lifetime. Without this
constancy in our tendencies, the concept of constancy would
be impossible. As to the object being counted twice, this is
only an afterthought when we contrast memory with percep-
tion. In our perceptual judgments, the object is counted
only once, i.e. as being in its own context, though it may, of
course, be counted wrongly as between objective contexts.
This is what happens in illusion.

The unique character of the referent context consists in the
fact that one factor or ingredient in the context is conative
tendency. It is true that the subject-object relation is in

part reversible. But this is as regards its contents or associates.

not "as' regards the unique attitude itself. It is the objects
which may figure twice over, — or rather be identical in a
large number of contexts, — as part of a context of interest,
and also as having certain relations, temporal, spatial, causal,
etc., to other contexts. The uniquely subjective relation is
a conscious reaction between a system of conative tendencies,

1 "Essays in Radical Empiricism," p. 22.

KNOWING MINDS 161

on the one hand, and a set of stimuli, intra-organic or extra-
organic, on the other. The relation of interest or experience
cannot exist unless there is the unique reaction of these two
factors. The apperceptive factor in this relation is a system
of associates, given direction and held together by conative
tendency.

To_say^ that the relation of subject to object is experience
adcied_to experience, looks likft the old fallacy of division.
Experience is here predicated respectively of the experienced
stimulus, whatever it may be, and the apperceiving system, each
taken in its abstract capacity, and apart from the unique con-
text. Neither can be called experience until they constitute
the unique situation of interest. To say, therefore, that this
situation is experience added to experience, seems to be a case
of putting the cart before the horse. James, in this case,
seems to have fallen into the very intellectualism which he had
combated all his life. What makes us distinguish the subjec-
tive from the objective far-tor is the function of selection an3
empnasis. This function cannot in turn be expressed in terms'
of the selected object without a hopeless circle.

?herehas been a strenuous metaphysical attempt of late to
getjjcTof end. terms altogether in JLh^mt^restrelatioRr We are -
told that the pure stuff or content of reality is entirely neutral,
and that the seeming difference in kind is due merely to the
external relations in different contexts. Says James : "There
is no general stuff of which experience at large is made. There
are as1 many sturls as there are 'natures' in the Wllllgs experi-
enced. If you ask what any bit of pure experience is made of,
the answer is always the same : 'It is made of that, of just what
appears, of space, of intensity, of flatness, brownness, heaviness,
or what not.' " x Again : "Thoughts in the concrete are made
of the same stuff as things are." 2 The same idea has been
championed by E. B. Holt : "The entities of the universe havR
no substance, but il tne spirit is weak to understand, then let
flesh, for a season, here predicate a neutral substance. Those
entities are related by external relations. A consciousness is the
group of (neutral) entities to which a nervous system, both at
one moment and in the course of its life history, responds with

1 "Essays in Radical Empiricism," pp. 26, 27. * Ibid. p. 37.

162 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

a specific response." l With Holt, however, this neutrality
seems to resolve itself, in the last analysis, into a materialistic
atomism. With James, on the other hand, it is part of the
philosophy of pure experience from which subject and object
are regarded as abstracted by subsequent reHection.

There seems to be an ambiguity here as between the expe-
rience relation, and what is experienced. What is experienced
may be any Jiind ,of . jJiing, physical or mental, that can make
a difference to our conative purposes. Our thoughts in the
concrete may very well have things as their contents ; and then
there is no difference, of course, between the content of thoughts
and things. They may, however, have mental processes as
their contents. In any case, such an ambiguous metaphysi-
cal use of the term experience at best obliterates what have
proven pragmatically useful distinctions. It does not help
us to understand the unique character of the relation where one
context evaluates and takes account of another context. Duality
there is, somehow, in the relation. The context which knows,
or is interested, is an integral volitional context, and not
merely an ensemble of externally related contents. What the
ultimate stuff of reality is, that is another question, and must
be determined by the requirements which we must meet in the
realization of our purposes.

The prejudice against end terms in the knowledge relation,
and the consequent attempt to eliminate terms altogether has
a double reason. One is a metaphysical reason. It is a protest
against the occult conception of mind as a substance, outside
of and irrelevant to the stream of conscious processes. With
this protest, we must agree so far, that the mind must figure
in the empirical situations, and must be known as regards its
properties and constancies precisely in such situations. The
other reason is ejggtemp^ogipal. and is a protest against sub-
jective idealism, which makes the existence of the object de-
pend upon being taken account of, or figuring for the time being
as part of our conative interest. With this protest, too, we must
essentially agree. Our -being interested in an object does not
create it, — does not constitute eTErTer" Ms" exfstence or 'its
objective qualities. That the tree is part of a physical space

1 "The New Realism," pp. 372, 373.

KNOWING MINDS 163

context is not due to our noticing it. Even that it is green is
not due to our taking account of it, but to the energetic relation
between certain light waves and our physiological organization.
Nor do our mental structures come into existence with our
taking account of them. They have a context of their own
which we must recognize. Our interest brings &newqualifica-
tion to the energies which are taken account of. But their
properties and relations ouiside ot tms must be regarded as
external to the cognitive relation, i.e. as having an existence
of their own whether mental or physical. Only so is science
possible.
What we insist is that the relation of interest is a real and

unique relation when it exists. And it involves a copativg_con^
stitution as 6ne*pT its rsagguJg. There is nothing mysterious
or occult about this, any more than there is about tne relation
H2D. E&ch is a ijgjguejmgffSflUUiBBlfo- Each must be rec-
ognized in its own right. The relation of mmU to stimulus
in the case of interest is no more neutral than any other energetic
action is neutral. But what do we mean by mind?

CHAPTER X

KNOWING MINDS (Continued)
IV

IN taking up the question : W^Oi^AJMttiflil we must be
warned at the outset that the phrase, " in the mind, " is a,n ambig-
uous phrase. In a senseT" anything to which _we attend is in
the mind for the time being, i.e. it figures as part of our field
of interest, but it is not therefore mental. G. F. Stout suggests
as a criterion of a fact being mental that it Is so Sepeftden^-upon
mind, that if mind should cease to exist, it would cease to exist
also. This may be granted, but it assumes that we already
know what is meant by mind. Stout and Alexander agree in
defining mind as "the subject of activity in the way of cona-
tion and attention, and also of feeling in the way of pleasure
and pain." 1 We may agree that will or conative tendency,
which we know in connection with attention and interest, is
mental. Let us see how far we can apply Stout's criterion,
and to what results it will lead.

G. E. Moore feels certain that consciousness, in the sense of
.. Tt is thp. only thing~that is common

and peculiar to all experiences — the only thing which gives
us the reason for calling a fact mental.2 Thus "the sensation
of blue includes in its analysis beside blue, both a unique ele-
ment awareness, and a unique relation of this element to blue." 3
The nature of this awareness is such "that its object, when we
are aware of it, is precisely what it would be if we were not

aware."

Now that consciousness is such a neutral light, I have tried

1 Arist. Proc., 1908-1909, "Are Presentations Mental or Physical?" p. 227.
»" The Refutation of Idealism," Mind, 1903, pp. 452, 453. See also Arist.
Proc., 1909-1910, pp. 38-40.

*Ibid., 1903, p. 450. « Ibid., p. 453.

164

KNOWING MINDS 165

to show elsewhere. But I cannot agree with Mr^Mpore that
consciousness is mental. 'J i J^Tjgnfa-V in one oT~its senses and
its most fundamental sense," says Mr. Moore, " is, I think,
merely another way of saying that the entity said to be mental
is an act of consciousness. So that, in this sense of the word,
that which distinguishes mental entities from those which are
not mental would be simply the fact that the former are acts
of consciousness, whereas the latter are not mental. A red
color is certainly not an act of consciousness in the sense in
which my seeing of it is." l This seems an arbitrary definition
of mental. It is not obvious that mental processes, such as
conative tendencies, must be conscious in order to exist. Con-
sciousness is added to them in certain energetic relations, but
it does not make them exist any more than it makes the physical
processes exist. Our will attitudes continue to exist and to
change when we are not conscious of them, as when we are
asleep. Even in conscious activity, not all of mind can be
said to be conscious. Therefore consciousness is not an essen-
tial characteristic of mental.

Neither can we regard "mental acts," in Mr. Moore's sense,
as purely mental. Such processes as perceiving involve, as
we shall see later, physical elements. I would say that in our
awareness of blue, there are involved three factors : There is
the energetic physical situation, including the action of light
upon our organism. There is further the selective reaction
to this physical situation. And there is, added to this, the fact
of consciousness. This is a non-mental fact, and makes possible
the awareness of the energetic relation. It is no more mental
than pure space ; and, like pure space, it is neutral as regards
the contents within it, i.e. it permits of free mobility so far
as it is concerned. If we represent the action of the physical
situation upon the conative constitution under the form of
three dimensions, we would have to add a fourth dimension
to represent the fact of awareness. The fact, furthermore,
that we know consciousness only in connection with certain
conative activities, does not prove that consciousness can only
exist under such conditions, i.e. that it would be destroyed if
mind is destroyed ; nor does it prove that mind can exist only

1 Arist. Proc., 1909-1910, pp. 39 and 40.

166 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

when it is conscious of itself. That we can only know a fact
in conscious situations is mere tautology.

If we now take up the contents of mind,1 it would seem that
the sense data cannot be regarded as mental. Blue is the
result of a certain action of a physical energy, light, upon our eye-
camera, and upon the nervous system. We do not in any wise
originate the quality blue or alter it by attending to it, though
it comes to have significance when we do so. A sense quality
is a purely physical fact. It is true that the so-called relativity
of sense qualities has been urged against their objective reality
from Protagoras to Stout. They vary with the specific struc-
tures of the sense organs, with the position and distance of the
observer, and with pathological conditions in the observer.2
But the relativity of sense qualities does not differ from the
relativity of any other energetic relations in nature. Other
energies, too, require special conditions for their manifestation ;
they vary with their space relations ; they fail to answer ex-
pectancies under defective conditions. To be sure, in the case
of some of our sensations, the quality is very much confused
by its fusion with other qualities and, especially in the case of
organic sensations, by its fusion with the affective tone of
agreeable or disagreeable. In such cases, we must, of course,
admit the psychological difficulty of analysis, but that does not
make the sense quality, so far as it exists, less dependent upon
the physical situation. We no more make the quality of pain
by attending to it than we make the quality blue. It is ob-
vious that destroying attention would not destroy the sense
qualities, though they would no longer be sensations, in the
sense of facts of interest. Stumpf and others have done ex-
cellent service in pointing out unnoticed sense data. A sound,
not attended to at the time, strictly speaking becomes a sensa-
tion only when we attend to it, and that may be after the
stimulus itself has ceased.

But if sense qualities are physical, what about sensory ele-
ments as we know them through revival in perception, and as
they exist in images? These, too, we must regard as physical

1 In the discussion of mental contents, I am much indebted to 8. Alexander's
paper, " On Sensations and Images," Ariat. Proc., 1909-1910, pp. 1-36.
1 See Stout, Arist. Proc., 1908-1909, pp. 237 f .

KNOWING MINDS 167

even though the immediate continuity with the outer energies
has ceased to exist. They are the persisting excitements of
such stimuli, having the same quality as the original situation
though, in the nature of the case, having less intensity. They
are as physical as the persistent effects recorded by the film of
the camera.

I would not say that all the contents of our mental operations
are physical. For the will may attend to its own operations.
It may take stock of its own tendencies and purposes within
its own complexity. These, no more than the sense data,
originate or alter in character with our awareness. The ob-
served facts here must change location from the subject context
to the object context, i.e. they must be abstracted from their
concrete setting. But they do as a matter of fact persist in such
a shifting. We can take account of their character and can ana-
lyze them. Nor is such awareness an awareness of a past moment.
That is absurd by definition. What is past is their functional
position in the subject context. They now figure with other con-
tents in the more abstract and artificial object construct. What
we feel so keenly in our mental analysis is that much is left out of
which we are aware as of prime importance in the flow and con-
creteness of real life. But this, of course, is true of physical
reality, too, even though here we have not the same immediacy
of acquaintance with the inner movement.

Even in what we are accustomed to regard as mental data,
much remains that is physical. In the gross affective fusions
which we call emotions, the bulk of the process, as has been
clearly shown by recent psychology, is sensational in character.
Whether we wholly adopt the James-Lange theory or not, we
must agree that the inchoate and confused mass of organic
sensations, resulting from the instinctive reaction, gives the
character and warmth to the special emotions. Compared
with this, the affective tone proper, which certainly does enter
in as a factor, is thin and abstract.

When we come to the feelings, here it would seem at any rate
that we are on solid psychic ground. But here, alas ! there is
a hopeless ambiguity of scientific terminology. This is due in
part to the difficulty of analyzing out the affective quality
proper from its fusion with sensations which are always present

168 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

with it. Some of these sensations are clearly distinguishable
from it, such as motor sensations and sensations of breathing.
Others are subtle and diffuse, notably those which depend
upon our alimentary and genital systems. These sensations
ordinarily remain below the threshold of attention, but while
their quality is well nigh impossible to discriminate, their effect
is vital and constant. They fuse in an immediate and largely
unanalyzable way with the affections and constitute the bulk
of what we recognize in the concrete as the tone and well-being
of the organism. Together with the sensations already men-
tioned, they form the overtones of our affective life. Indeed,
some maintain that they constitute it altogether. In so far
as we give the name feeling to the fusion as a whole, it will be
seen that the bulk of our feelings, as well as our emotions, is
physical in character, — the difference being merely that the
feelings depend upon more general organic reactions, and thus
lack the specific character of the instinctive emotions and the
volume of their deeper organic reverberations.

Not only has there been confusion as regards the fusion of the
affective tone with certain organic sensations, but there has
been a similar difficulty as regards its fusion with certain ob-
jective qualities. Thus we are in the habit of speaking of
aesthetic feelings. Beauty has been defined as constant ob-
jects of pleasure, as contrasted with the more fleeting and un-
certain character of the mere agreeable. But what is constant
in the appreciation of beauty are the form qualities or the con-
tent-relations, not the feeling. The beautiful object may be
agreeable, and is so whenever the will sets itself the particular
purpose of enjoying beauty. But it is not so always. The
best music in the world becomes disagreeable when the attention
has set itself the task of doing something else with which the
musical stimulus interferes, as performing delicate discrimina-
tions in the laboratory for example. The form quality of the
beautiful object, on the other hand, is not altered by our will,
though in the case of artificial beauty the object owes its form
quality to the selection and synthesis of the will in the first
place. The mere fact that the feeling of enjoyment can be
repeated again and again does not constitute the beauty of
the object. If so, all the satisfactions of the constant tendencies

KNOWING MINDS 169

of our nature would be beautiful. The satisfaction of hunger
or of curiosity is capable of constant repetition, and is more
universal than the feeling for beauty, but it is not beautiful.
It may even jar on our sense for beauty. Byron hated to see
a woman eat. The constancy of the satisfaction, in any case,
lies in part in the permanency of the objective quality, in
part in the permanency of a certain organization of the will.
It does not lie in the feeling.

What is psychological, therefore, in our emotions and feelings
is the abstract affective tone of agreeable or disagreeable, and
this seems to have only those two qualities. This is dependent
upon the will — its success or failure in realizing certain tenden-
cies in terms of its stimuli. The constancy or variation of
tone is a function of the dominant tendency or set of the will.
Since the will like other energies is predictable in definite situa-
tions, the affective tone is in so far predictable.

The difficulty in knowing the affective qualities is not a
difficulty of acquaintance. There is no mistake about the
consciousness of the pleasant and unpleasant. Just here and
only here the Berkeleian criterion is true that esse est percipi.
The difficulty is entirely one of analysis. And this difficulty
is twofold. It is in part a difficulty of fusion. While we can
with comparative ease dissociate the affective qualities from the
extra-organic sensations, it is exceedingly difficult to disso-
ciate them from some of the organic sensations. Hence the
difference in classifications. Another difficulty is due to the
fact that since affection is the sense of realization on the part
of the will, there is danger of changing the direction of the will
by its superadded interest of analysis. This difficulty is prob-
ably exaggerated, as many processes, particularly those of the
primitive instincts, have quite sufficient momentum and in-
dividuality to persist even when the interest is thus divided.
Their tone depends, not upon their being part of the subject
tension, but upon their realization. In more delicate cases,
memory can be used to eke out immediate perception.

In so far as we look at thought in its content aspect — what
thought deals with — this again is largely physical. Of course,
we do form concepts of mental processes, but they are meager
compared with our concepts of the objective world. Since

170 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

our laws of thought are modes of operating with objects, these
laws must be regarded as relations within the contents of
experience. And since the contents we deal with in the opera-
tions of thought are overwhelmingly physical, we can agree
with Russell that the laws of thought are the laws of things.1
They are for science the most universal laws of things, but
while abstract and highly useful ways of handling facts, they
cannot be assumed to be a priori laws of the universe. As
universal they are, like all universals, hypothetical. Their
applicability must continually be tested through our success
in explaining things, including mental things.

If we turn now from our survey of contents in the mind to a
survey of mental acts or operations, our way should be clearer.
But even as regards attention, which seems so obviously a
manifestation of will, analysis discloses the presence of physical
factors. Some psychologists have tried to state attention in
purely intellectual terms. They have regarded it as merely
an associative context of ideas. While this theory neglects
the importance of the guiding and controlling set, which uses
the associative mechanism as an instrument for its particular
end, the indispensable presence of the intellectual factor in
the higher stages of attention is indisputable. To get pure
attention we should have to go back to the most primitive mani-
festations of the will in the individual and the race — to pure
awareness without any knowledge about. But this purely
instinctive and impulsive manifestation of interest is, so far
as our own adult experience is concerned, purely hypothetical.
We can only observe it inferentially in the first stages of mental
history. For our introspection, the attention situation has a
large intellectual admixture where the physical factors are fused
with the strictly mental in the associative interest patterns of
memory and imagination.

Not only are there present in the attention context the stored
up and associated sense data in the way of ideas ; but certain
immediate sense data in the form of organic sensations, partic-
ularly the motor and respiratory sensations, also enter in
as an integral part of the fusion. So prominent are these
that some psychologists, like William James, have found the

1 "The Problems of Philosophy," pp. 137, 138.

KNOWING MINDS 171

basis of the consciousness of mental activity in the motor sensa-
tions from the forehead, throat, etc. James has gone so far
as to say that the only subject identifiable in our various mental
states is the "I breathe" : "Let the case be what it may in
others, I am as confident as I am of anything that, in myself,
the stream of thinking (which I recognize emphatically as a
phenomenon) is only a careless name for what, when scrutinized,
reveals itself to consist chiefly of the stream of my breathing.
The 'I think' which Kant said must be able to accompany all
my objects, is the 'I breathe' which actually does accompany
them." l Doubtless it does, and it is a conspicuous element in
the situation so far as our introspection is concerned. But what
figures in the foreground of our introspection is not necessarily
the most important factor for understanding the situation.
While the "I breathe" accompanies all our thinking, it does not
give direction or motive to it. This must be found in the will.

In attention in its highest stage of organization — that of
disjunctive weighing of alternatives — both the ideational
objects and the concomitants of motor sensations have their
maximum prominence. But here, too, the conative tendencies
furnish the motives ; and the direction of the process is deter-
mined by the systematic will which just through the conflict
discovers its real purpose, and pushes forward to its realization.

Mental acts, therefore, as they reveal themselves in the
attention situation, disclose the character of mind in an un-
mistakable way; and they disclose it as will. Of the will
thus manifest in action there are two dimensions — attention
and affection. We cannot identify these, as has sometimes
been done. Attention is, at any rate, logically prior to affec-
tion. There must be the releasing of tendency, " the catching
of the attention," before its movement towards its realiza-
tion can be felt. Moreover, in automatic attention, affection
sinks to zero. Attention is the energetic relation of a conative
constitution to a stimulus. It is analogous to selective action
as we find it throughout nature, and in the absence of con-
sciousness. The affective tone reenforces or checks the release,
not by acting upon it, but through the awareness of its success
or failure in realizing its end.

1 "Essays in Radical Empiricism" (Longmans), pp. 36, 37.

172 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

If mind is will, conative constitution, we must bear in mind,
on the one hand, that will reveals itself in various stages of
complexity from blind instinct, through impulse, desire, and
wish, to organized character. We must not, with Schopenhauer,
strip the will of all but its blindest stage. It has its own capa-
city for development and for conservation of results — its
own Karma, not only as regards possible future existences,
but from moment to moment of this existence. On the other
hand, we must not lose sight of the fact that it is only as the
will figures in certain physical and social continuities, — operates
through the tools of physical processes and deals with physical
contents for the sake of common understandings, — that it
comes to know its existence and properties.

The tools by means of which the will operates on the instinc-
tive level are organic structures. These have the advantage,
once having been established through survival selection, of
being definitely adapted to certain situations. But the difficulty
is that it requires a long and costly process to establish them —
a process in which the race alone counts, the individual is
sacrificed. And, again, having become established they are
stereotyped ; they cannot meet radical changes of the environ-
ment.

As instruments for action, therefore, the will needs to supple-
ment the organic tools of instinct with more economic and ad-
justable tools. In doing so, the will also liberates itself more
and more from the body, and becomes conscious of its own
reality and value. Adjustment by organic habit is more eco-
nomic than organic structures ; memory images vastly shorten
the process ; and abstraction with its artificial symbols and its
material tools gives the will the maximum of efficiency as
well as the greatest freedom of activity and sense of realization.

We have thus seen that the will is dependent upon physical
instruments — hereditary physiological structures, physiological
habits, and upon the physical qualities which go to make up
the content of images, and largely of abstract thought. These
tools, enormously important as they are for the will, are not
to be confused with the will itself. They are not mental at all.
Where the will manifests itself is in the conative tendencies
which give intent, motive, and cumulative unity to the self's

KNOWING MINDS 173

operations. And wherever interest figures as part of the cement
and leading, there is the will proportionally prominent and
efficacious. The adaptation to ends is largely physical in the
case of instinct ; it is less so in learning by habit, as here the
success of the conative tendency helps to fix the habit by its
effect on organic processes. In perceptual fusion and contiguous
association, interest, somehow, is an essential condition in es-
tablishing the habitual linkage ; in association by similars its
selective agency is still more prominent ; and in ideal construc-
tion the physical processes become obviously instrumental in
the realization of a free self-conscious purpose. While in-
strumental, however, the physical staging of the will remains
nevertheless important in supporting the freer superstructure.
Physiological habit and contiguity remain necessary means of
conserving the selective results of experience for further use,
however much the wih1 may intersect and select within the
habitual connections.

So far as the modes of the will are concerned, these can only
be known as they unfold themselves in its selective reactions.
Each instinct reveals a fundamental mode of will — a theme
which is organized in ever greater complexity through its
racial and individual development. It becomes the will to
live, the will to own, the will to enjoy, the will to sympathize,
the will to know, and so on through its varying and com-
plex motifs. If the will is dependent upon a physical world
and its contents for its realization, it is in turn the reaction
of the will which makes the meaning and value of life possible.

As an energy the will resembles fundamentally other energies.
It must be known through its effects in definite situations. It
is to a large extent practically predictable. Like other energies,
it possesses inertia. It requires a certain amount of stimulus
— either a physical shock or an inner rhythm — to arouse it.
Being roused, a certain energy must be taken away before it
subsides into rest. It is a definite quantity : a greater emphasis
in one direction means the withdrawal of interest in other
directions. Will energy bears definite relations to other
energies, even though we find difficulty in reducing them to
exact quantitative measurement.

In answer to the question: What is mental? we must say,

174 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

A

then, that the will in its various stages of organization is mental,
and with it is bound up its pure affective tone of agreeable
or disagreeable. The remainder of what we speak of as in
the mind we must regard as physical. In order to be known,
the will must figure as a living activity, as part of the context
which we call subject in the subject-object relation. It' includes
in its apperceptive activity an associative context, but this is
energized or set, in a unique way, by the dominant tendency.
Associates, contents, whether physical contents or the will's
"persistent tendencies and results may figure as part either of
the subject or object, but not the unique activity of the will
itself. Destroy this, and you destroy mind. This is the real
core of the ego. It is not an occult substance, but an energy
which is known through its effects on other energies, and which
thus knows itself. The situations in which the will discovers
itself are intersubjective relations where will confronts will
in the tension of common problems.

I cannot agree with Stout that conation and feeling are not
merely known through experience as a tree may be, but are
themselves experiences.1 While feeling is doubtless bound up
with certain organic excitements and with consciousness, I
cannot see that the case of the will differs fundamentally from
that of the tree so far as experience is concerned, except in so far
as the will may figure in the attitude of knowing, may be con-
scious of its own procedure. The tree so far as we can see can
be only object in the experience relation ; it cannot be subject.
Neither, however, is created by being experienced. JExpe^
rience is only another name for the unique relation which we jeall
inlgfesTJ^ahdnr"cannot see why the will is dependent for its
existence upon noticing itself, or being noticed perhaps by
another will, any more than the tree is thus dependent. The.
will cUscov.eraitse.lf through the same energetic relations as it
discovers- things. It is only as it enters into the interesting
situations that it becomes aware of its own existence or expe-
riences itself. And then it discovers itself only piecemeal, as
it discovers things piecemeal, in different situations. -It is
not conscious of its whole self in one act. It has many proper-
ties, and these are often contradictory and inhibit each other.

» Arist. Proc., 1908-1909, p. 244.

KNOWING MINDS 175

If it is surprised at the novelty in the situations which it faces
in the world of objective reality, it is no less surprised at the
new instincts, tendencies, and meanings which come to light
within its own constitution. Experience is but a relation into
which the will enters and where the light of consciousness is
thrown upon it.

When we come to the identity of the self, we must hold that
the self, like phvsica.1 j.binys. is just as constant as we can take
it — as constant flj* ^ a.n.f.ivit.iesL and contents; as its ability"
ifTaaflafy ar>n'Ql o^p0^0"™'0*3 What is the use of assuming, be-
side this constancy of the stream of consciousness, an external
entity to make the process constant? Such an entity is ob-
viously an afterthought, an hypostasis of the fact of constancy
itself. It makes the processes neither more nor less constant
than they actually are hi the flow of experience. As the
organic sensations constitute a constant background in the
changes of mental life, they play an important part in our
consciousness of identity. They furnish largely the warmth
and tone of personality ; and disorganization of these sensations
produces serious disturbances in our sense of self; yet- to- fur-
nish the meaning of identity, there must also be certain con-
s£ant tendencies, which furnish the leading or active thread of
experience irfthe panoramic and shifting scenes of feelings,
perceptions, and ideas.

•^yj^is quite right that the consciousness of succession is a
different fact from successive states of consciousness. But it
does not follow that the consciousness of succession requires
any transcendental unity outside of the stream of experience.
The consciousness of succession means that a relatively perma-
nent system of tendency, hi order to realize its will, must
take account of the coming and going of contents — must
emphasize the constant as over against the fleeting in order to
establish definite expectancies. What furnishes the pragmatic
substance is precisely this core of permanent tendency and
associations. in the miffat of thf- fl\i«T WEat "is~EKe use ~o? 'HupTP
eating this identity by assuming another identity to account
for it and so on ad infinitum ? Why not take the constancy of

176 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

the processes, so far as such constancy must be acknowledged,
at its face value ?

Constancy and change are both facts that the will must ac-
Icnnnrlftfipe in the nrnfiftaa nf experience. There is the relatively

permanent will, the invariable associations ; and there is, on
the other hand, the shifting of contents and values, the new
experiences, the unforeseen obstacles, the pleasant surprises.
Why not tflfcp^expprip.nne aa it is ? But this is not human
nature! Ourtendency is to emphasize some aspect of the whole
and neglect the rest. For instance, you must admit that
there is constancy in experience. If that is the case, one argues
there must be absolute constancy. In and through the states,
there must be an eternal self, a transcendental substance, which
remains identical in all the states. And the changes themselves
are merely accidents of this eternal substance or character.
And, on the other hand, there is change. Our mental facts
come and go. Very well, then there must be absolute change.
There can be no constancy if there is change. Each gross
moment is really divisible into infinitesimal changes. And
everything must necessarily flow through these infinitesimal
transitions. There is only appearance of qualities or tenden-
cies, but really there is this absolute flux. Does the attention
vary? Then the contents attended to must vary also. Do
our ideas vary? Then our will attitudes must vary too.
Such is the manner of reasoning the human mind from age to
age has employed ; and new editions are appearing all the while.
But what we must not forget is that the conception of an eternal
self, on the one hand, or of the calculus of flux, on the other,
are merely tools with which we work. Their authority in
the end can never rise above the facts from which we have
derived them. The contents and tendencies may overlap our
ideal divisions. All we can say is tW. fa f.he history of the
self t.hprft ia fihft^gft and growth and novelty, but there is also
some constancy Else we wpuldjQot_even be talkin^LBouTj^S.
There would be no memory or expectancy. We must learn to
recognize constancy in so far as there is constancy, and flux
in so far as there is flux.

Just why there should be such a mystery about the con-
tinuous occurrence of a relatively stable context, taking ac-

KNOWING MINDS 177

count of a series of successive feelings or perceptions, it is
hard to see. But such has been the feeling of others besides
Mill: "Accepting the paradox that something which ex
hypothesi is but a series of feelings can be aware of itself as
a series. ... I think by far the wisest thing we can do is to
accept the inexplicable fact, without any theory how it takes
place ; and when we are obliged to speak of it in terms which
assume a theory to use them with a reservation as to their
meaning." l Yes, perhaps. But would it not be wiser still
not to invent such an absurd paradox? The series of feelings
does not as a series know itself, but is known as such by a
context of interest which is for the purpose stable. And,
again, while our ability to control the series of feelings, so as
to keep them in the focus of attention, may be circumscribed
by a few seconds, it is not necessary to suppose that the in-
terest in controlling them is so limited. The dominant tend-
ency, the ruling passion, may be lifelong. To measure the real
permanency of the self by the flicker of attention, whether we
have recourse to the infinitesimal calculus or finite fractions of
seconds is equally mistaken. The real specious present is just
as long as the associative interest, determining the series of
events, whether we attend to such interest or not. The time-
span of the self and the time-span of attention should not be
confused. As a matter of fact while attention flickers we can
bring back again and again the contents and will attitudes.

The past is not made by the consciousness of it any more
than the present. You might just as well say that the geo-
logical strata originate with the consciousness of them. The
past has its own context and its own content as much as the
present. The past comes to have significance for the present
moment, when it is attended to ; but its own meaning does not
originate then. If it did, there would be no possibility of
knowing the past, because there would be no past to know.
The context of the past must somehow persist and be ac-
knowledged by the present, if we are to have a past. Else
there could be no memory. Take the simplest case of recog-
nition, ideal or perceptual. Part of the past content must
figure as a content in the present context. This content in

1 J. S. Mill, "Examination of Sir Wm. Hamilton," 4th ed., 247 ff.

178 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

definite recognition reinstates its own past setting, be it the
sensory context of the perceptual object or the ideational
setting, which is acknowledged by the present context, in-
cluding the dating. There may, of course, be all degrees of
reinstatement, and so of vagueness of recognition, but in
any recognition a past content must figure as the identical
content in the present context together with its own tendencies.
In this unraveling of the past context, there is also the more or
less vague intuition of pastness, due to the growth series of
which the contents are a part. Sometimes an identical content
plus this feeling of pastness is all that figures in the present
context, and we have the confusion of feeling that we have been
in the same situation before, when we know we cannot have
been there.

In purposive realization, we have a similar illustration of
constancy with reference to the future. If ideals could not
persist, but were new every moment and in each infinitesimal
fraction of a moment, there could be no such thing as the
realization of an end. Experience would be one immediate
slough without direction. The facts of experience, however,
show that we can keep a constant nuclear aim, however much
the context of our meaning may grow in extent and definiteness
in the process. There remains an identical constellation of
content through it all. And so ideal realization is possible.

It is true that we depend very much upon symbols in retaining
the past and in fixing the present and the future. Knowing our
own meaning, past and present, as knowing those of others, is
largely an interpretation of language. But language after all is
only the symbol of the contents of experience. Language could
not convey the same meaning, unless we owned the meaning.
We can recall blue sky when we perceive the words, because we
have the actual meaning blue sky, however fragmentary its
concrete content. And failing this, as in an unknown tongue,
we would simply have words staring us in the face, conveying
nothing. Language, moreover, is discrete and stereotyped
and fails to give an equivalent for the quivering transitions
that persist indefinitely within the systematic meaning. It
is not fair to substitute the tool, however important, for the
living reality.

KNOWING MINDS 179

But, we shall be told, the real persistence is not of the con-
tents themselves but of brain-processes. We have elsewhere
pointed out the absurdity of supposing that our mental con-
tents are converted into atoms and molecules, when we are
not attending to them or still more that they should disappear
into nothingness to be magically recreated. All that the
brain cells can do is what the phonograph or the camera or
the written page does for our senses — furnish a record of
experience. But just as the mind must_furnish the real content
for the written page and the other sense records, so it must"
furnish the content for the brain record. The brain record no
more makes the content than the words on the page. And if
the brain record means a constant record it must be because the
content is recognized as the same. As a matter of fact, owing
to the uncertainty of the brain record, we substitute largely
the ink record which is both more reliable and socially more
available. Whenever, then, we have the meaning of identity
and not bare physical identity, there must be the identical
will. Through the process there must run the silver thread of
persistent tendency. That is the real currency of which the
records' are the symbols. That we are immediately aware
of the brain record and only through the senses conscious of
the ink record does not alter a particle the significance of the
records. When we read the ink records, we do not read the
retinal fibers or light rays; we interpret them as symbols of
content, just as much as though they were written on our
brain by the law of habit.

The mental energies have their own laws of spreading and
becoming ineffective as shown by the researches of Ebbing-
haus. Sometimes our associative contexts become dissociated ;
and, when they do, no transcendental ego breaches the gap.
Memory and recognition operate only when there is constancy
within the referent context. The other contexts, the relata, can
suggest neither sameness nor novelty, unless there is such
constancy in the subject. How far the inefficiency is due to
records can be ascertained by the fact that when an objective
record is present, visual or oral, the contents are reinstated
even when the brain record is ineffective. This fails when there
is real dissociation of the context of meaning.

180 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

We must, finally, remember that the constancy of the in-
dividual meaning is determined not merely by the individual
himselfr but by his social context of relations, which reacts
upon his own consciousness and with reference to which con-
stancy and flux alike become practically significant. This social
context of judgment with its records must determine how
far the individual feeling of identity can be trusted. TJie^
individual meaning sometimes judges itself to be constant,
when trie social verdict is otherwise. And identity ha? signifi-
cance primarily as a social category.

VI

The unity of the sejf is a question distinct from the subject-
object relation. Whether the self functions as whole or part,
there is, whenever it is awake, the focal and marginal field,
the active context, and the selected content. This is true even
where there is complete dissociation of associative systems.
Leone II, when awake, has just as much the I-me character
as Leone I, however distinct they may be as regards associa-
tions, temperament, and character. To what extent, then, the
experiences of one organism hang together must be treated as
a problem by itself.

The self has a& much .or as little unity as. we must recognize.
We must take unity precisely as we are accustomed to take
difference — at its face value. And here again no a priori
assumptions will either increase or diminish the unity which
we find in the actual processes. As a matter of fact, a tran-
scendental ego or soul, or any other additional entity, spiritual
or material, simply becomes one fact more to be related to
the rest ; and if we dogmatically deny unity to the facts them-
selves and treat them as purely unique and disparate, no
external linkage will serve as cement to bind the hypothetical
differences together, not even in an infinite series. The
processes cannot be unified by being "in something" external
to themselves, material or spiritual. They must possess
their own linkage.

The dogma that each state of consciousness is unique and
indecomposable is as indefensible as that of a transcendental
knower relating disparate facts. There could be no judg-

KNOWING MINDS 181

ments in an experience where the facts are so intimately blended
that the experience could only be taken as a whole. All our
thinking depends upon our ability to analyze out identical
qualities or relations and to pass from one context to another
on the basis of such abstraction, dealing with the contexts
only so far as the identical predicate pertains. As a matter of
fact, actual experience shows that we can take objects and quali-
ties now in one context, now in another, without altering the
object by thus subjectively taking it. The content yellow when
transferred from the marginal to the focal field of attention is
not altered in quality, whatever may be the difference of moving
it from the marginal to the focal field of vision. We can know
the past, we have seen, and we can prepare for the future, be-
cause we can take the contents and their contexts over again
without altering their own meaning or reality in so taking them,
however much their significance for the cognitive contexts may
be altered. The dogma of the uniqueness of each state of
consciousness as such contradicts all our procedure and would
make not only the science of psychology but any science im-
possible, for all science presupposes the possibility of taking
facts over again in experience.

There are doubtless unities in experience which fulfill a unique
imrpgse and which" as individual unities cannot be exchanged
for other_ unities. But why, therefore, give our entire expe-
rience this character ? And even when a whole has uniqueness,
it does not follow that the elements cannot be analyzed and
taken over again indefinitely. Unique as the Angelus is as
a painting, the elements of color, perspective, and form can be
analyzed out and can figure in any number of contexts. The
composition ig not unique, in its elements, but in the will, wmcir'
they express through their correlation and which furnishes a
specific satisfaction to the appreciating subject.

Absolute uniqueness, like the absolute ego, is a dogma un-
supported by facts. Why make knowledge impossible by
assumptions? If experience came merely by unique throbs,
prediction and knowledge would be impossible. If it consisted
of wholly diverse contents, knowledge would likewise be im-
possible. But to some extent we can have prediction, we can
pass from fact to fact by means of identities in the stream of

182 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

processes. Let us take as distinct what experience makes dis-
tinct, and what experience joins together let no man's assump-
tions put asunder.

If we insist on abstracting from the processes of experience
altogether — from its active context and its selected datum —
in order to discover something which is not process at all
but which is superadded to the activity of the self, we get
not a transcendental ego or any other common entity outside
of the process, we get the fact of consciousness in the abstract
which accompanies all our apperception. This is not a
spectator. The spectator of experience must be the apper-
ceptive context. It is merely the condition of awareness at
all. It is quite colorless. It is responsible for neither diver-
sity nor unity. It holds together as little as it separates.
It simply makes the facts apparent. It is not necessary to
give consciousness an individual existence for each knower
as is done with Purusha in the Sankyah system. The in-
dividuality belongs to the processes themselves, in their
phylogenetic and ontogenetic history. Consciousness taken
as an abstraction is homogeneous.

Sometimes we must recognize the self as partial. It may
be a case of impulsive control where the total context of tend-
ency fails to express itself. We then speak of ourselves in
retrospect as not being ourselves. It may be a dissociation
of memory, which makes us fail to connect with the past
and so carry out our obligations and satisfy expectations.
It may be organic disorder which makes one part of the con-
tents, previously linked with the self-contents, seem foreign
altogether, with altogether strange properties. It may be a
case of more profound dissociations, where dirempted systems
of association, each with its own characteristic tendencies,
simultaneously or alternately struggle for the mastery. In
all of these cases the contents thus dissociated may come to
figure again, after restored equilibrium, in a total context with
its characteristic consciousness of identity. But, in any case,
we must accept the actual association or dissociation as it is.

Even when the facts hang together, they do not hang to-
gether in the same way. There are different grades of unity.
This has not always been recognized. Because some facts

KNOWING MINDS 183

hang together systematically as parts of a purpose, it has
been argued that the self is fundamentally a thinking or rational
self and that all mental activity is implicitly or explicitly of
the judgment type. The realization of an ideal self, then,
becomes a case, not of empirically selecting and composing a
unity in obedience to a purpose, but of becoming conscious of
an eternal self already constituted and implicit in our simplest
mental acts.

Again, because some facts apparently hang together in our
attention moment only externally, in space and time, with
no seeming internal bond, but are simply interlinked by con-
tiguity within the field of interest, it has been argued that
habit or contiguity is the only real linkage of our mental
facts, with similarity given perhaps a more or less vague secon-
dary place. Or, perhaps, the opposite : since similarity of
content is sometimes found to be the seeming linkage, contig-
uity is made a case of similarity, if the two are not simply held
out as irreducible laws. This external linkage, moreover, has
generally been credited, not to the side of mental processes,
but to the account of brain processes. Our ignorance of brain
dynamics and the paradox of cementing feelings and ideas by
means of atoms and molecules and their habits has not dis-
comfited physiological psychology.

Now here again we must take connections at their face
value. In part, evidently, the facts of mind hang together
as members of a system. They cohere and are controlled by
an identical purp<5Se — utilitarian, logical, aesthetic, etfd&d,"^
"oFTreliglous. li may be the idea of wealth ; it may be the
pursuit and creation of beauty; it may be the love for truth;
it may be the passion for righteousness; it may be the imi-
tation of Christ. The ideal self is no doubt the selfjumfied 1
within a comprehensiye^urBOse^ where all

all facts seen in systematic relation. I-hit for us finitea this

unified self is largely an aim and only in part fact.

The linkage sometimes is the consciousness of a common
quality or relation by means of which the otherwise seemingly
heterogeneous facts or contexts hang together. Thus con-
sciousness of a common quality may bring together processes
which have never been experienced together and so is quite

184 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

a distinct and elementary fact. In every case of recognition,
however rudimentary, this consciousness of the partial identity
of traits of one individual or context with another is present.
This, in the case of the judgment of analogy — the building
of expectancies upon identical traits — forms the transition
to the reading of facts by internal connections rather than
by adventitious. That one individual or setting is merely
like another is an adventitious relation. It is when the
identity links them in a system of prediction, that we have
science.

The loosest or most adventitious bond is that of habit,
the contiguous interest in facts merely happening together
in space or time. The overlapping part of one context tends
to reinstate its other context or one of its other contexts in
accordance with the strength of the habit so established and
the dominant set at the time. The set of active tendency acts
like a switch system, making some habits effective and others
ineffective for the specific purpose.

Whether the linkage be through a systematic purpose or
through similars or through habit, in any case the linkage
is due to the consciousness of identity in the variety of facts
and contexts. There must be at least the bond of unitary
interest, whatever may be their own linkage of the facts them-
selves — the identity of the context which takes account of
the facts, fleeting and heterogeneous as these facts may be.
While a great deal of our mental life is held together by such
contiguous interest, we must not forget that it is precisely in
the mental world that we can follow the transitions from fact
to fact and have the immediate consciousness of their string
of identity, i.e. wherever we have purposive unity. Outside
of what appears to be mind we must be satisfied to piece out
the transitions conceptually and inferentially. We cannot
follow immediately the transitions of the facts. It is a mis-
take to ignore these internal transitions of the mind and to
strive, as modern psychology has done, to reduce the relations
of mind to the adventitious and external kind. Purposive
unity must be recognized together with passive association
by similars and by contiguity as an actual type, as well as an
ultimate ideal, of mental connection.

KNOWING MINDS 185

VII

What becomes of activity and freedom, if we once admit
that the stream of tendency is the agent? No theory can
unmake the facts and such activity or freedom as there is
still remains. It is hard to see of what use a transcendental
knower or any spiritual something could be in accounting
for activity or any other function of the self, as it must
necessarily be the same whether the self is active or passive.
Activity, as contrasted with passive and non-voluntary
states, would still have to be stated in terms of the concrete
processes, though somehow it is hard to rid ourselves of the
feeling that the idea of an extra entity, added to the facts,
affords an additional guaranty of identity, unity, and freedom.

The world of psychic reality, it is rightly
pointed out, is not exhausted in our concepts. It is not all
included in our present logical context of meaning. One
characteristic fact about the stream of consciousness is its
ever"hbvel situations and novel attitudes. You cannot except
partially predict the future. But however true this may be,
as stating our finite experience, and however much we may
recognize the truly temporal aspect of life, it does not seem
possible to define activity in such terms. Ear. change and
novelty exist apart from our activity. They confront us
whether we are active or passive, awake or asleep. They
may come to thwart our purposes as well as come as the fruits
of our efforts. J_dn ngt see, therefore, how we can define
Mt]vify nr frppdnm i'n tf^rTfis of novelty.

Acj:\yJjjL.aiid freedom must moan the realization of an aim.
And we cannot aim at the unpredictable. We can only wait
for it and let it happen as it may. Activity onjth

means the control of events — ideas,, feelings, perceptions,
impulses — by an idea which remains constant. It is just this
conscious leading that we, in our awake moments, mean by

the self. That the novel and unforeseen happen is incidental
to the activity and may be forced upon us quite independently
of our being active ; though a general readiness even here is
theT thing7in~tiifning the novel to our advantage when it comes.

186 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

Activity means that the consequences follow from our intention,
not contrary to our intention.

Activity, therefore, is the very opposite of chance, which
means the unpredictable and uncontrollable. Fluent our
world must be to some extent to have expectancy, to look
to the future; and with the fluency there may be novelty.
Perhaps there always is. But freedom relates to making
real the ideal content, to regulating the flow in accordance with
the dominating purpose. Only when the idea can recognize
the results as its own fulfillment, however much more definite
and concrete, do we have freedom. Whether the flow in
such a case is determined altogether by " considerations," or
whether it is to some extent independently variable, does not
concern the question of freedom, since we are free only in .so Jar
as the flow is controlled by the purpose, is organized into some
.ideal scheme of life. The novelty, as we finites can take ac-
count of it, is necessarily an afterthought, a gift of the process,
and by hypothesis it is not anything we can theorize about.
It is a character of the concrete flow, as contrasted with the
expectant and guiding idea. Whether it is absolute novelty
or due to the peculiar limitations of our experience it is dif-
ficult to know. Some of it is evidently due to the limitations
of our finite consciousness, where we often discover that what
is novel to us as individuals or even as an age is already part
of the content of historic humanity. The novelty of the
child, to whom all is novel, is merely its taking over of the
content of the race, in terms of its own specific organization.
But while novelty abounds in the infant's life, there is no
freedom. Conduct is free only when it is a consequence of a
systematic purpose. We do not call a man free in so far as he
must say of the outcome of his conduct : " That is not what I
meant" or "I had not thought of that."

There has been a tendency of late to minimize the impor-
tance of the focal factor in attention. A new light has been
thrown upon the complexity of our mental life by such researches
as those of the Freudian school. More emphasis is being placed
upon the dimly conscious or even unconscious impulsive back-
ground than upon the intellectual constellations which occupy
the foreground of our conscious field. The real motive springs

KNOWING MINDS 187

must be sought, it is held, in the deeper impulsive strata, rather
than in the shuffling of ideas. It is this impulsive background
which furnishes the real determinants of interest and conduct.
Sudden crises in our emotional and volitional life have been
explained by the subconscious incubation of tendencies which
gather strength, often unbeknown to the habitual stratum
of consciousness, until, sometimes under some special stress,
sometimes by their own cumulative energy, they break through
the crust and establish a new center of emotion and volition.1
In such cases, self-surrender, rather than ideational control,
seems to be the secret of the establishing of a new equilibrium,
with its characteristic consequences of value and conduct.
Needless to say, the new level of interest may mean retrogres-
sion as well as progress, counterconversion rather than conver-
sion, from the point of view of socially established ideals. In
either case, the change shows that there are more things in
heaven and earth than are dreamt of in man's intellectualistic
philosophy. Valuable light has been thrown, in many cases,
upon socially pathological emotions and conduct, as well as
physical disorders, by psycho-analysis through its unearthing
of balked dispositions. It is true that the Freudian School
has placed a one-sided emphasis upon sex dispositions both in
explaining pathological and normal behavior. Other primitive
impulses, such as self-seeking, fear, anger, etc., are equally
original, if not equally pervasive, and must be taken account
of both in their normal and pathological aspects. The ideal
tendencies, too, as shown in religious conversion may be the
balked dispositions. But in any case, the new exploration of
the subconscious has disclosed the limitations of the intellec-
tualist psychology of mechanical associationism.

Without minimizing the importance of the discovery of
dissociations in the strata of our psychic life, it is true neverthe-
less that, in thejstream of the self aa Imown ffp rnnst of us, t.h^«
is an interlinking of dispositions in our waking experience.
The subconscious is here the more which furnishes the basis
of movement and interest in a one-story structure, more or less
loosely organized. Here, too, what we are distinctly conscious
of in the way of snatches of ideas, perceptions, and feelings

1 See James, "Varieties of Religious Experience," Chapters VIII, IX and X.

188 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

floats on the larger stream of the subconscious life with its
associative and impulsive tendencies. But though the con-
scious part may be only a tenth or hundredth part of the total
stream, it is nevertheless important in the steering. Work of
moment does not get done, unless there is the attention to
plans and ideals. Valuable results come to us from the sub-
conscious only when there has been a previous set established
by conscious effort. Most of us are not saved from uselessness
and chaos by self-surrender, but rather by active attention
which makes certain tendencies focal and meaningful until
our life becomes fairly thoroughly organized in terms of such
ideals. Activity and freedom still continue to mean the
steering and control of the multitudinous impressions and im-
pulses bv-means of purposes, fragmentary though our conscious-
ness of their implications may beA

VIII

Finally, t.hft Hyn^pin t.Tipnrv of the a^|f RTplaina t.hp.

and worth of conduct in so far as it possesses those characters.
Any abstract entity added to the processes would as little
account for the presence as the absence of value in any specific
process. VqliiR jp « flimntiiftn of activity. Objects have value
when they satisfy some tendency of the self, in~it? various
stages of complexity and equilibrium. As every satisfaction
of the wilHs ji value, we must distinguish between value and
worth — '"H'^JYp value "and objective yalue. WhetKer
activity has worth or not does not depend upon its individual
satisfaction, but upon its agreement with a standard which the
will must acknowledge. It may be the standard of social
agreement ; and this at any rate is enforced upon the individual
will, whether accepted by it or not. But as this also is vari-
able, our finite activity, in order to have worth, must refer
to a standard which the social will, too, must accept in its
racial development. The meaning of this we can only catch
gradually, and every such advance in meaning must come
from individual insight.

As the agreement of activity with an objective standard, is
worth °^lt';_*h*fl'ft 11 R" "Uj'™fltifi and eternal standard,,

_

ment with this standard means immortality. As society

KNOWING MINDS 189

conserves the unities which harmonize with its standards, and
makes the poem, institution, or individual that expresses its
will immortal, in so far as in it lies, so, if there is an ultimate
standard and a will to enforce it, this will must intend the
immortality of that which realizes the standard, be the unity
personal or impersonal. The worthless unities could not,
in such a world, survive as individual unities, they could only
survive as contents or tendencies to be used as raw material for
more comprehensive unities, as the button molder in Ibsen's
" Peer Gynt " melts up the sham individuals in his ladle.

Since so much of what enters into our mental processes,
both in the way of content and in the way of associative mech-
anism, is physical, it is a question whether such elements and
contexts can survive the shock of bodily decay. The real
continuity of min(^may,Jia.Y£.tabe thought of purely in terms
of the will — its continuity as an energetic complex, with its
stored-up effects and its organized character. This concep-
tion of continuity is that emphasized by the Buddhist conception
of Karma. Thus to conserve the moral results would indeed
make immortality a practical reality. Ideational memory
and association may well be looked upon as machinery, exist-
ing for the time owing to the mind's conjunction with a physical
body and valuable as instruments in the development of the
will, in order to make effective its capacities for docility and
refinement. If we limit memory to " organic memory,"
to the retention of motor results which can guide the future
process of development, there is no reason why the will should
not be accorded memory. Such memory must indeed be at-
tributed to the hereditary stream of cells which condition the
unfolding of every complex life history.

We may thus look upon the coarser or finer qualities, native
to the minds of human beings as we know them, as the result
of such immortality on the part of the will looking backward,
though conceived perhaps in racial rather than individual
terms. To have this greater capacity for truth, for beauty,
for uprightness, and for friendship would indeed seem an im-
mortality well worth while. It marks the quality of wills now
and may so continue forever to mark their quality with ever
greater possibilities*

190 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

Of course the persistence of an individual will would mean,
not merely the persistence of conative tendencies, but the
persistence of a certain organization, a certain form quality
of the whole which marks a unique personality, as it marks the
unique harmony in music. Such organization of character
shows a remarkable durability in our present life history, and
does not seem to be dependent upon the changes of the physical
organism.

Even in the case of the physical content and its habitual
associations, it is, of course, possible that these may be so inti-
mately woven into the character and unity of the will that they
can exist independently of their particular physical conditions.
Like a diamond set in gold they may persist inlaid in our in-
terests. This is more difficult to conceive, though our faith
here in bare possibilities may be aided by direct results from
the despised science of psychic research. Nothing indubitable
would seem to have been arrived at up to date, though some
distinguished investigators feel otherwise. Further research
may here, as in other fields, bring greater agreement.

At any rate such conceptual dissociation of mental energy
from its temporary physical conditions, will give faith a freer
play to construct its belief world as may be consistent with our
hopes and happiness. Where we know so little, it is important
that our conceptions should not trip up or block some of those
deeper yearnings of humanity, which certainly have tremendous
social and race significance, however incapable they may be
of scientific proof. The craving for _Jmmortality remains at
any rate one of the most stubborn and perennial demands of
the will. As the will becomes conscious of its realily iilld -dig-
nity, it naturally becomes solicitous to shape a conception of
the world which shall furnish a congenial climate to its brief
conscious awakening in the time process.

CHAPTER XI
INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL MINDS*

WE have spoken so far of mind as though it were made up
of individual streams, in more or less abstract isolation from
each other, each bound up with its own organism. We have
become accustomed, thanks to the sharp abstractions of science,
to look upon mind as subcranial. We cannot, however, in my
opinion solve this difficulty of abstract isolation by getting rid
of mind altogether and by substituting for it organic reactions.
Mental behavior is not mere physiological behavior ; and add-
ing the quote of interested organic" buhaVloT "Merely introduces
the problem of mind through the back door. For we must
still define interest. This is no mere neutral light as we have
seen, but an energetic reaction between the will and a stimulus.
The stimulus may be physico-organic ; it may be internal to the
will's own rhythm ; but it may also be another will. It is the
relation in the latter case with which we are concerned here.

In assuming, as psychologists have done in the past, the
isolation of minds, the relations between minds have necessarily
been regarded as external relations. The continuities between
minds have been assumed to be physical continuities, unless in
some "spooky" instances of telepathy. We become conscious
of other minds, it is supposed, only through analogy from physio-
logical conduct, i.e. we represent to ourselves that other people
have minds from the similarity of their bodily behavior to our
own, assuming, of course, that we have knowledge of our
own minds from the start. By imitating other people's be-
havior, including in later development their words as well as
their instinctive sounds and gestures, we learn to translate
more fully the hidden mind of the other egos into terms of our

1 For a fuller treatment of the social mind, see the author's articles in the
American Journal of Sociology, 1913, 1914, 1915.

191

192 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

own and so to share to some extent a common world. What*
is thus directly shared and common to minds is the physical
world. With this each of us has immediate continuity. This
distinction between mental and physical, modern psychology
has crystallized into the formula that physical facts are those
which are objects to several observers while mental facts are
objects to one observer only. The former furnishes, there-
fore, the world of description, the latter is only accessible to
private intuition.1

Why this precedence should be given to physical continuities
is not easy to understand from the point of view of logic, though
natural enough from the point of view of custom. The material
, world has been too^ much with us. Early and late, through~a,
long survival struggle with the sense environment, we have
been directly dependent upon it for our immediate wants,
while conscious cooperation with our fellows and the treatment
of them as anything more than things — breathing bodies — is
comparatively late and not over-widespread now. In the
lowest animals, mind seems entirely enslaved to the organism
and its needs. Blind impulse and habit seem here indeed a
part merely of organic behavior. In the higher animals the
free association of ideas, the division of labor and cooperation
for common ends help to liberate mind from this instrumental
relation to the body until in civilized man, with his power of
abstract thought, the relation is reversed. Body comes to be
the instrument of mind, and the individual's world of ends
comes to be found more and more in social companionship, in
the mutual cooperation and appreciation of his fellows. This
common bond comes to be looked upon more and more, not as
a mere artificial contract but as the fufillment of spontaneous
and fundamental needs. A world of spiritual relationships
thus arises where the individual Eves and moves and has his
being, and, compared to this, the solid physical world, through
the progress of science, comes to seem more and more a plastic
means.

This mastery, however, is made possible only by means of
abstract thought; and abstract thought, indispensable as it

1 This contrast has been most clearly emphasized by Professor Miinsterberg
in his " Grundziige zur Psychologic."

INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL MINDS 193

is to this process of liberation, carries its own penalty. It
tends to make us insensible to the immediate continuities of
life. It cuts the world up into abstract elements. It atomizes
its integral situations for descriptive purposes, and then un-
consciously substitutes the instrument for the concrete inter-
relations of the real world. Thus conceptual thought, the
most efficient of social institutions, kills the sense of social con-
tinuity and reduces mind to a mere abstraction. Its relation
to its world becomes a mere external relation, at the same tune
that the objective world is itself broken up into abstractions
and external relations. Incidentally, thought, when thus cut
loose from those concrete purposes of experience for which it
is to furnish the leading, makes itself impossible and absurd.
A world made up of abstractions is no longer conceivable ; and
so thought in despair comes to discredit itself and to seek solace
in mysticism.

It is one of the paradoxes of human development that con-
ceptual thought, the social instrument by which mind dominates
matter and secures efficient cooperation of mind with mind,
should thus in theory have come to isolate mind in the universe,
if indeed not to make it a mere function of matter. But this is
not all. Thought has similarly emphasized its abstract sub-
stantives in our social relations and made us correspondingly
forgetful of that sense of immediate companionship of mind
with mind which furnishes the propelling motive of social
cooperation, including abstract thought. Not that thought
has destroyed the sense of companionship. Constructive
imagination does not make men selfish, as some suppose. By
hberajingjnind^f rom the immediate sense ^vorlcL it has vastly
TsnEanced both the nftffi ynt\ t.frft Tftftli^y nl "spiritual assort a f.inn
It has made possible the relationship of friendship, the freest
and most precious of social communions where man rises
above, not merely the slavery to animal want, but traditional
bondage as well, and where soul meets soul on the basis of
lasting ideal kinship. There are compensations. But the
atomism of our thinking is both effect and cause in the realm of
practice. While originally the effect of the narrowness of our
human interests, it in turn crystallizes and tends to justify
and perpetuate our social atomism. This defect can be cured

194 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

only by a deeper thoughtfulness, when thought recognizes its
instrumental character and examines its deeper, though often
unconscious, motives.

Perhaps Bergson is right that the higher insects with their
concrete intuitive life and their lack of abstract thought are
more keenly conscious of the real continuities than we are.
But at any rate they don't know it if they are, while we can
with an effort at least call back thought to its original task of
making clear and distinct our concrete intuitions.

We thus, in the process of experience, literally differentiate
ourselves ouE of 1L§6£lfll COntlnuiim. in this process of differ-
entiation, in this growing recognition of each other's reality, the
combative instincts play the most important role. We are •
no sooner brought together by the irresistible pull of gregarious-
ness than we like children fight to possess the same things;
perhaps we fight for physical things, perhaps for the mastery
of the social situation, perhaps to emulate each other in a self-
imposed task. And in the fight we discover the mutual reality
of wills and our relative place in the scale of valuation. The
sense of companionship in the meantime which pulls us to-
gether and holds us together in spite of the conflict, and even
makes us enjoy the conflict, is in the background of conscious-
ness and is apt to be overlooked by the intellectual attention.
It may seem as though we were together just to fight, to be an
interference and torment to each other. We fail to realize that
war itself however destructive, and however clumsy and primi-
tive as a method of social evaluation, is a social process which
"makes some gods, some men."

To sum up our brief genetic retrospect, we may say that while
to start with, both in race._hJstQry..^nd individual history, the
particular will is- a rather blind function of an individual organ-
ism, in the growing civilized life of which we are a part the
particular mind becomes rather a function nf a ancjfll organ-
ization of mind with its necessary division of labor and free or
compulsory cooperation. In this spiritual economy of the
world wff are Iftp.rfllly members one~of Another.

If we succeed in recovering ^ to'someTexteht the innocence of
that immediate experience from which all our abstractions are
made, we shall find, I think, that the isolation of mind from

INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL MINDS 195

mind is based in scientific prejudice, no$ jp fop

1'n* processes of external representation and analogical infer-
ence presuppose immediate social acquaintance, valuable though
they are in our attempts to know about other minds. We do
not start with a knowledge of our own minds and then eject
it into other bodies, but wer becorne consciousof being^ minds
through our_interactipn with other^minds. ..It is in meeting .
thejojiiex-ailly-which thwarts and baffles it, that our own will
awakes to its reality and claims. Except for this social intef^
action, it would remain submerged in the physical continuities,
a mere function of organic conduct as we find it to be in the
non-social animals. Oiir knowledge, of SOP.IR| nnntinnitjiea
starts^ like all Igipwlprig-p n* ™*"1;+y with certain Jntllit&Lfacts.
Tnemtersubjective continuities are first of all felt, and they
are felt to be different from physical continuities. This fact
is more elementary than the representation or inference of other
minds; and is presupposed by these intellectual processes.
It is because we feel the continuities with other minds fl.n^ -
must aHJust ourselves to them that we try to know about them.
Our intuition of social continuities is as immediate and elemen- **
tary a fact fl.a fliat nf phygina] finntufljiijpia ; a.nH from the nnrrvh

of view of knowledge, it is the demands of the social interactions
which lead us to disti nguish bet ween mtersubjective and physical
continuities. We could not, therefore, very well infer the
former from the latter. The mind, whether conscious or not,
exists always in certain dynamic contexts or energetic fields;
but, so far as we know, it requires the unique tension of an in-
tersubjective field, a conflict with another mind, to raise it to
consciousness of itself.

The agnostic is at a-ny rflfo nnnsisf,plMtf]y wrnrg He does not
hold tnat we have a true intuition of^ physical continuities, but
arc isolated as^minds. iie regards boin c6nti!IUitle5" as stlb- •
jecuvestates. We thus five in a sort of middle world of phan-
tasms, — a world neither mind nor body nor a copy of either,
but a misrepresentation of both. Hence we can know no reaU
things, we can trust no intuitions as regards either world.
The pragmajjcLpoiflJhflfjdfiw^-On the other hand, insists that we •
rntiSHStari wit^ 0^1* immediate intuitions and beliefs ana tr^
to make thfifp ffl^giatignt, flnrl f ;lpflr ^"d one of those intuitions,

196 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

is that of the first-hand and immediate character of social
companionship. This for the mind, unspoiled by artificial
abstraction, is as categorically convincing a fact as are the
immediate sense continuities with the physical world.

What is there to set over against this convincing intuition
of social continuities ? There is an abstract body of secondary
beliefs due to scientific theory. We still insist on applying the
molecular conception of interaction to the relation of mind to
body. To the old type interactionist, it means that mind
somehow must be located within the brain and give a push to
its molecules. To the parallelist such interaction is incon-
ceivable and absurd, and the only relation possible is that of
inert concomitance and miraculous correspondence, while the
materialist caps the climax by ruling out mind altogether ex-
cept as the bare abstraction of a neutral consciousness.

The mechanical theory has long presented similar difficulty
as to physical interaction. This difficulty led Leibniz to deny
any interaction between monads. It led physical science to
discard the so-called secondary qualities because in their case
the characteristic action of the physical stimuli was supposed
to stop with the end-organs. Just how the primary qualities
got past was not explained, but merely taken for granted;
and the agnostics and subjectivists who were more consistent
had no trouble in insulating mind from any outer physical world.
Such was the logic of the old mechanical hypothesis.

Fortunately, we have come to know a type of energy which
is not ponderable matter. The immaterial character of electric-
ity was long obscured by our carrying over our mechanical
models into the new field. The ether was invented with all
sorts of contradictory properties to furnish a medium for this
new energy. But whatever may be our belief as regards the
existence of the ether, we have at any rate come to recognize
that in electrical energy in its various forms we have a unique
type of immaterial continuity which intersects and pervades the
gross material framework in all sorts of ways. What is opaque
to one wave length becomes translucent to another — to
X-rays or violet rays. However difficult it is to accustom our
minds to the properties of this immaterial energy, we have here
a type of continuity of far greater subtlety than any known be-

INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL MINDS 197

fore, a type where molecular models cease to be applicable. As
the discovery of free electricity has liberated the conception
of this energy from matter, it is to be hoped that the conception
of mind may also be liberated from the hypothetical models
which have made our immediate convictions as to the con-
tinuities of mind with the physical world and with other minds
absurd.

As electrical energy rides on material energy and is thus
focalized in definite directions, while yet establishing its own
terminal continuities, so we may conceive that mental energy
rides on electrical energy and yet establishes its own immediately
intuited continuities. Within our own body the mental energy
seems to traypl cm thfi electrical energy of the nervous system.
And why not on the electromagnetic field with which our
nervous system is continuous? When we send a voice over
an electric wire, don't we also send the mental impulse which
gives character and persuasiveness to that voice and makes a
will at the other end respond to it in a definite way? Are we
certain that the will to send the voice stays in the brain ? That
we believe so is due, I believe, to an artificial tradition.

I do not care to go on indefinitely and work out possible
analogies between mental energy and electrical. They will
easily Suggest themselves and may easily be overworked. We
have no more right to transfer the electrical conceptions bodily
to the mental realm than we have to transfer the material con-
ceptions to the electrical realm. What I wish to emphasize
is that the conception of electrical fields of energy and their
immaterial continuities across space, intersecting our gross

material wttfld. 8Q5m5 to furnish a model which fiFs'in with OUT
unconquerable conviction in the immediate "companionship of
mind with mind. Let us substitute for the old conception of
the soul as an indivisible, localized atom, the conception of a
field of energy with its vas^ue peq\pnbral edgRs 7ii" SPf (jtuliiigg
and its more or less focalized and shifting center of activity,
and we shall have no intellectual obstacle to dealing with our
social intuitions.

Such a conception conveys no new information. This must
be gotten from experience as before and always. It does not
support a telepathic hypothesis except as social experience in-

198 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

dicates such an hypothesis. Our social continuities become
no less mediated by a nexvoiis. system, end-organs and anTfiter-
vening physical world, whatever its constitution may be, than
before. It simply insists that mental energy rides acroarsnd *•-*
over these other energies alocTestablishes real overlappings, true
continuities in its own right and kind. Whether more direct "
and free continuities across intervening space than those so
mediated are possible under conditions of high intensity and
the special receptivity of the polar fields must be established
by evidence; but if so established no intellectual model need
discredit it, and we may admit that there is being accumulated
a number of uncanny instances that may point to a telepathy
of this more special kind.

When once we abandon the dogma of the insulation of mind
somewhere in the skull, there are many interesting phenomena
about human relations that may throw light on the activity
of this mental energy. Just exactly what is it that makes people
attractive or repellent to each other and sometimes the opposite
to different people and to the same people at different times?
What is it that constitutes the " atmosphere " of some person-
alities and the absence of it in others or that gives some a
positive, others a negative " atmosphere" ? What is that makes
some psychically warm, others cold, and others colorless ? Why
do some people move us and others not, though the latter may
have the better argument and the better cause? What takes
place when we find a person animated in conversation ? What
happens when a person is radiant with joy and makes us feel
his good cheer? What is the dynamics of contagion, be it of
fear or courage? These are just a few of the questions of
everyday social life which we shall be able to understand better
when we are ready to accept the intuition of immediate expe-
rience that the will is an energy which radiates beyond any
definite center ; that when we meet in sympathy two fields of
will actually blend ; and vice versa that they repel each other
when we are antagonistic. Thus love and hate become real
first-hand interactions of wills of which the corresponding
emotions are the reflex effects.

Language, gestures, and other sense symbols are merely the
code for controlling the intellectual associations and thus making

INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL MINDS 199

definite the meaning of mental continuities. They do not con-
stitute" tne continuities. Uommon moods and common atti-
tudes are possible without such symbols, but without them
we cannot be sure of the similarity of the associative trains of
ideas and images that go with the attitudes. As these are
bound up with the brain, the direct communication of them
becomes more difficult. Music succeeds in producing common
emotions and attitudes, but the intellectual associations vary
greatly with different listeners. It is the former that furnish
the directly intuited character of intersubjective continuities.
It is reported that Carlyle and Tennyson would often visit to-
gether for a long time without either saying a word. Then
Carlyle would get up and take his hat and say : "That was a
good visit, Alfred." Silent communion of soul with soul may
give us the strongest 1sense"''Uf

een^unSC^wpiiius'c recognizs two typ68L^>f con-
tinuity, material and immaterial. These two types may

occupy the same space, the immaterial intersecting, riding over
and bridging the material in various ways. In a scientific
way we have come to know one type of immaterial continuity
with great definiteness, that of electricity. The other type of
immaterial continuity, viz. the mental type of intersubjective
communion, human beings have been acquainted with and
convinced of since the beginning of social relations, but our
knowledge of it is fragmentary. This is probably in part due
to our scientific prejudice. In no case of spatial continuity
can we follow it point for point. We must piece out our per-
cepts by means of our concepts in any knowledge of continuity.
But we make our concepts in any case to describe the intuited
results. If we can understand these results only by assuming
energetic continuity, i.e. if somehow two energies must con-
tribute directly to the result, then we have a right to believe
that the continuity exists.

In a physical compound such as H20 we know that there
must be action of the chemical energies upon each other, be-
cause the result is not the mere external addition of the prop-
erties of the two elements as we know them in other contexts.
The compound, water, is a new individual with distinct prop-
erties of its own. The relations are in part at least internal

\

200 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

relations, affecting the nature of each element contributing.
What is true in the physical compound is true in the social
compound. The will of the group, swayed by a common mo-
tive and common emotion, is not an external addition of the
traits of the particular individuals, as taken either in psycho-
logical isolation or in other social compounds. The specific
group mind has properties of its own which involve fusion of the
various individuals into a new result. The various individuals
feel a different degree of convincingness, of power, of sugges-
tibility as regards the dominant impulse for being a part of the
social situation. A new energetic field has been established,
a new individual has arisen with distinct characteristics. There
is somehow a real overlapping — an immediate inhibition or
reenforcement of wills, peculiar to the unique social situation.
The relation here as in chemical compounds affects the natures
of the terms and is not merely an external relation between
abstract entities. If we must thus take the result, then the
continuity must be a real continuity. \^ill must somehow act
upon will within a common energetic -field to produce this
individual unity. *-

It is, moreover, through the variety of such situations or
compounds that the self comes to know its own characteristics.
Np ma.1? liveth unto hims.e.lf : we liye only in situations. And.
the most important situations for knowing on^ppJveg are these
common reactions, when we feel each other^ I"""™!! conflict,
and sympathy. The ego, therefore, when conceived apart
from such social situations is largely an abstraction. We
exist in clusters or common fields of energy whose mutual
attraction or repulsion we feel, rather than as abstract indi-
.viduals. The particular self is a later abstraction made pos-*-
sible largely because of the variety and complexity of social
situations into which civilized man enters as compared with
tribal man. This, with his abstract name, enables himself
and others to dissociate him from particular contexts and to
regard him as an independent personality. But even this
abstraction is a social function and is rather a discrimination
of certain constant traits within a variety of situations than an
independent existence which would mean nothing.

Not only is the social field of mind intuited as having its own

INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL MINDS 201

unique traits as an individual, but it must be so dealt with in
our practical relations. It commands our loyalty or antago-
nism as an individual. This is very different from the loyalty
or the antagonism which we show toward particular com-
ponents. It may even be the direct opposite. We may love
the particular person and yet hate his nation or vice versa.
This 'loyalty or antagonism to the group is not an attitude tn
a"mere collection of particular persons, but a solidarity or unity
that includes them and in a measure makes them what they
are. In savage life where persons are not abstracted from the
group, no difference is made in the treatment of the isolated
person and the group. The religious command to the ancient
Hebrews was to exterminate indiscriminately the members of
another nation. The members were not conceived as having
potential relations as possible members of the conquering group.
The more common custom, however, among primitive nations
was to preserve the conquered as slaves of the conquerors.
This, however, was a merely instrumental and external relation.
In the case of the subordinate unity, the family, the individual
member was not, any more than in the nation, conceived as a
potential member of other families. Even after marriage he
remained a part of the family of the patriarch and subordinate
to it. .Jt is in the complexity of %» nfltrfflltjflil "d**™™*"'™'
of civilized life that the individual comes to stand out as having
a dignity and 'independence apart from any one complex.

In studying the nature of the social mind, we must proceed
empirically as we do in the case of the particular mind.* In
the case of the social mind as in the case of the particular mind,
we can study the subject-object relation, the unity, the iden-
tity, the worth, and the immortality of the individual con-
cerned. As regards the subject-object relation, there
case of thes^ctalnrnmTl, ttiB dominant, selective will,
is the"pQect- aimed -tut i While there is a many-headed focus
of the social consciousness, the real subject which evaluates
and decides is not the particular indtvidTTui,1' but the field of
connnon tendency and emotion. It is the group will which de-
cid^sjlhroTight.h^ particular pers^y This will selects differ-
ently — emphasizes different values, has different inhibitions,
and releases, from the individual will. It may select to sacri-

202 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

fice, when the individual would conserve; it may even disre-
gard the individual's claims altogether. The individual can
say : I live, yet not I but the common will which liveth in me.

The leader is no exception to this. He is the function of
the group, swayed by its common interest and in turn swaying
it by his affirmation. »» The leader and the led are part of the
same social situation — victims of the same illusions, subject
to the same exaggerations, fascinated by the same ideals. Only
because the leader and the led are controlled by the same values
can the relation exist. There could have been no Napoleonic
age of sacrifice and devastation if the people had not shared
with their leader the false dreams of military glory and of bloody
conquest. They were alike victims of the illusions of the age.
The leader may grasp the situation more clearly than the
rest ; he may divine what the others want ; but in the end he
only leads because he symbolizes the ambition and ideals of the
led.

In this social situation, the intellect plays its due role as it
does in individual life. The object aimed at calls up the ap-
propriate associations or means for its realization; and the
movements and ideas spread from one to another by imitation
— all in obedience to the internal contagion and the dominance
of a common impulse. Here, as in the economy of the individual
consciousness, the intellectual factor rises or sinks in prominence
with the complexity and novelty of the task to be performed.
In the chance crowd and the mob, habit and spontaneous
association are sufficient to satisfy the simple impulse. In
difficult situations deliberative judgment may be called for to
adapt means to ends. But in either case it is the group will
which is the subject controlling the train of ideas, the operations
of the various brains involved. It is a common mind tapping
the resources of the individual centers involved.
*y In the group mind, too, there is the consa'^iiani^ nf identity
from moment to moment — the persistence of theimpObe or
ideal to be realized. This, as in the case of the mob, may be
a mefe~1miomentary impulse, due to the predominance of a
certain primitive instinct for the time being, such as fear or
anger. But it may also be a more complex and permanent
tendency involving ideal organization. The will of a nation

INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL MINDS 203

may persist generation after generation while individuals come
and go. Through the internal changes and external vicissi-
tudes of ages, there is still something distinct and characteristic
about British mind as contrasted with French. It is a mistake
to identify the social mind with the mob merely and its evanes-
cent existence. Its identity must be judged, as we judge in-
dividual identity, by the common drift of tendencies, by the
persisten^ tiT*"*-^- which overlap the__yjjjojia_iaQmentg ion8P
existence. This is never abstract identity, any more than it
is in the case of the particular self, but the persistence of a
direction of will within an ever-changing historic process.

As regards the type of unity which dominates social minds
here again we find the^same variety a.s ip pfl.ffip.nln.r nr^ntlg
The unity may be largely external — the imitation and venera-
tion of common customs and traditions — or it may be a thor-
oughgoing unity of common ethical ideals andf the recognition
of coruliimi uMlris and responsibilities. Only in the highest
stages of development is the latter type of unity dominant.
With the group mind, as with the particular mind, it is only
through some greq.fr gflaia tfra.f. it. rHafwmi-B whn|f if. w*a11y means,
that its dominant tendency rises to a conscious purpose, and
that conscious loyalty to such an ideal becomes a guiding emo-
tion in its conduct. In the absence of such crises, the ideal is
implicit and life becomes routine, guided largely by the external
associations of custom.

As regards the worth of social minds, this, as in the case of
particular minds, must be detcrmined"Jt5y the dominant ideal.
Does its leading furnish v^

of the particular factors involved? Does it produce proper
control of the primitive by the ideal and yet give the primitive
its due? Does it play the whole scale of values possible to
human nature? Does it furnish the fullest possibility of de-
velopment for the future? Then it has realized the maximum
of worth. If, on the other hand, the common direction of ten-
dency is produced merely by the intersection of a certain level
of human nature to the inhibition and neglect of others, more
particularly if this level be that of the primitive tendencies
of impulsive satisfaction, then the social mind, as the particular,
becomes immoral.

204 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

*" Finally, as regards the immortality of social minds,1 they
will survive as individuals will survive, if they have intrinsic
worth as recognized by the growing process of history. Here
as a matter of fact the immortality of the individual and, that
of his group are inseparable. The immortality of the Greek
mind will survive while the minds of Homer, and Plato survive.
In them lives the genius of the Greeks, even as they live in
its atmosphere a'nd give articulate meaning to its tendencies.
The merest fragment of a Greek artist is alive with the Greek
mind. Neither individual nor social will depends upon physio-
logical vehicles, once it has created for itsel'f a spiritual body of
art, science, and institutions. In these lives the real will, the
•real purpose of a people. Connect with this spiritual field of
energy, and you feel the influx of its blood with new capacities
for growth and appreciation. Whenever history has connected
vitally with the Greek mind or Hebrew mind, it has meant a
new epoch of life and inspiration — a new impulse towards
science and art or a new heightening of the moral level of the
times. And minds which can thus energize and transform man-
kind are not dead, though for a time they may be disconnected
from history. In the unified self of human development they
continue their full significance and life. And if there is an
overarching spiritual communion, greater than humanity, .en-
veloping and conserving spiritual values, these social minds,
we may believe, have a unique individual immortality within
it proportionate to their permanent significance.

1 For a fuller discussion, see the author's article, " Social Immortality,"
International Journal of Ethics, 1915.

PART III
SPACE AND REALITY

CHAPTER XII
PSYCHOLOGICAL AND GEOMETRIC SPACE

THERE are two aspects to the space concept. These have
not been sufficiently differentiated in the past, viz. the series
character of the concept on the one hand, and the void on the
other. The confusion of these two aspects of the space con-
cept led to the classic controversy between Newton and Leibniz.
Newton emphasized the reality of pure space. Leibniz em-
phasized the geometric or relational aspect. According to the
former, "space has an existence, in some sense whatever it may
be, independent of the bodies which it contains. The bodies
occupy space, and it is not intrinsically unmeaning to say that
this definite body occupies this definite part of space, and not
that part of space, without reference to other bodies occupying
space. According to the relational theory of space, of which
the chief exponent was Leibniz, space is nothing but a certain
assemblage of the relations between the various particular bodies
in space. The idea of space with no bodies in it is absurd." *
In the history of thought, the aspect of the void was the first to
be developed. The interest in things preceded the interest in
thought. Moreover, this aspect is involved in our practical
adjustments. It is implied in the concepts of motion and
interaction. It is presupposed in the answer of the atomists
to Parmenides and Melissos. Parmenides argued that non-
being is unthinkable, therefore, there can be no void and no
motion. The atomists argued, on the other hand, that there
is motion, therefore the void must be real ; and hence assumed
atoms and the void as their two ultimate principles. In Em-
pedocles and his followers, the theory of pores as conditioning

1 Article, "Geometry (VII)," by Whitehead in the llth ed., Encyclopaedia
Britannica.

207

208 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

the interaction of things, both upon each other and upon our
sense organs, might have opened up the problem of the relativity
of knowledge, had the implications been seen.

The other aspect of the space concept, that of series, could
come into prominence only as the Copernican change took
place from the interest in things to the interest in those mental
processes and laws that condition their appearance for us. In
so far as the serial idea is present in ancient times, as among the
Pythagoreans, it is ontological ; and against this conception of
space and time, Zeno had no difficulty in showing that con-
tinuity and motion are impossible. What he failed to see is
that our points and fractional divisions are but ideal tools in
the service of our will in predicting and controlling the ener-
getic pulses of the world with which we must deal. These are
not infinitely divisible, but only pragmatically so. With
Aristotle, the concept of a figured space is upheld as against
the void, but the boundary of one body with reference to an-
other is still an ontological boundary. Since Kant, it has been
generally agreed that the space concept is adequately expressed
in serial terms ; and hence the ideality of space logically follows.
That the ghost of the void, so long laid, should rise again must
make the hair of the boldest Kantian fairly stand on end. But
the thesis I wish to maintain in this paper is the ideality, in-
deed, of serial space, but the reality of space as pure space, or
the space of physics and astronomy. In this chapter, I wish
to make some comments about psychological and geometric
space. In the next, I shall proceed to the proofs for ontological
space.

Psychological Space

First, a word as regards the presuppositions of our perceptual
space, or the a priori character of the space intuition. It was
this particularly that attracted the attention of Kant; and
this priority to experience furnishes his most important proof
for the ideality of space. Kant's arguments for the a priori
character of the space intuition are, briefly: first, that in
order to represent things outside myself, or " as side by side,
that is, not only as_different, but in different places, the repre-
sentation (Vorstellung) of space must alreadv_Jifi there";

PSYCHOLOGICAL AND GEOMETRIC SPACE 209

secondly, that "it is impossible to imagine that tl^re shnnlH

nnP might. very well imflfflnp. thai. there

might be space without objects to fill it"; thirdly. thafpn
tHis necessity oi an a miorj reprp^ent.Rt.ipn of spa.p.e re^fc +t
f oil CpnrnetriV,fl1 prinp.ip1esr a.nd the pos-

sibility of their construction a priori." l Space, in other words,
cannot be aTgeneralization from empirical data ; for in that case
we could make only empirical judgments about it. That we
can make necessary judgments about straight lines, the proper-
ties of triangles, the unity and infinity of space is due to its a
priori character.

Now, as regards the first, of thesfi argument^ fr is. of course^
true that externality is an ii"™pfh'flitiP fap> We do not start
with experience as infernal, and then project it into an external
world, whether of things or selves. The "intuition" of ex-
ternality is, first of all, an organic affair, due to the evolutionary
adaptation of the organism to its world. It is not dependent"*
on consciousness. The purely reflex centers react to specific
external stimuli; and so, for that matter, do inorganic struc-
tures. The magnetic needle takes account of the presence of
the loadstone as an external fact, varying with distance. These
are primal reactions which antedate and condition conscious
experience. They are subjective only to a false metaphysics.
As regards the second argument, physical things rmiptu flf
be conceived as in space we

ments, either conceptually or antuallv pjet rid of space : but we
can abstract from things by creating a vacuum and observe
what happens. This does not hold in the world of our logical
abstractions. Logical entities and relations do not have to
occupy space; and in our logical manipulations we can, of
course, abstract from space, and take the properties of things
out of spatial relations. But this is no argument against Kant,
for he expressly limited the relevance of space to the world of
sense perception. In his third argument, Kant changes his
point of departure from rJfysiV.a t.n gpnrpptr-V- Tne space which
physics deals with does have empirical properties which^cannot
be predicated a priori, though our nervous system has long

1 The quotations are from "The Critique of Pure Reason," section A of
the Transcendental ^Esthetic, Max Muller's translation.

210 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

been adjusted to them in the survival struggle of the race, And
so they are to a certain extent presupposed in our perceptions
and reactions. They do not, however, have apodictic cer-
tainty. The properties of geometric space do, because while
they are abstractions from our empirical world, they are de-
termined by the system of postulates which we choose for the
special type of geometry. Certainly the axioms of Euclidean
geometry are not innate in the sense that the baby possesses
them. They are rather logical limits and presuppose reflective
thought with its laws, unless we regard everything as innate
that we have learned before we are twelve years old, to use a
jibe of Schopenhauer's. They had, indeed, become so in-
grained in the social tradition of thought at Kant's time that
he could not conceive the contrary. For us, however, they are
only one type, though a convenient type, of geometric postu-
lates. They certainly are not forms of naive perception.

It is true, however, that certain presuppositions are implied,,
from the point of view of our later reflective consciousness,"1
in our biological and perceptual adjustments. The most general
of these are the law of externality and the law jrf msife. OHe
is as importam as the other for the building up of ouf world of
sense perceptions. We must be so constituted as to locate
some impressions within each other's space, and others in
different spaces, in accordance with the economy of attention
and the demands of conduct. The former is as important as
the latter. We must have unity of things as well as externality
of things. If we did not have the innate law of externality,
we should not spread things out. If we did not possess the
innate law of fusion, we should have no things to spread out.
If interpenetration were not a law of our perceptual world as
well as externality ; if, on the contrary, it were the law of space
that all impressions must be spread out as external to each
other, we should not be able to learn from experience; we
could never know a physical world. It is as a result of the de-
mands of the environment that the organism has been forced
to locate certain impressions, which it can attend to at the same
time conveniently and which recur together, in each other's
space — the prospective taste value of food in the space of cer-
tain tactual, olfactory and visual sensations. It has been

PSYCHOLOGICAL AND GEOMETRIC SPACE 211

forced also to orient itself with reference to stimuli, external
to each other — favorable or noxious — as spread out in differ-
ent directions and at different distances in its environment.

And now a word about the content of psychological space.
Since Lotze, a great deal has been made of local signs ; and the
psychologist's imagination has shown no end of ingenuity in
constructing space maps. In textbooks of psychology, a
great deal of space has been devoted to how a space might
have grown up. However ingenious these attempts may be,
and however important pedagogically in robbing psychology
of its " soft " character, it is becoming clear that these con-
structions are largely artificial — due to a certain psychological
tradition, rather than an account of the actual genesis of our
space coordinations. I, for one, cannot discover in normal ac-
tivity any such map, either tactual or visual. I can, to be
sure, by a voluntary effort, construct in imagination such a
picture or map of my body and then localize with reference
to it ; and I can see how the compulsory construction of such
a map, in order to understand the so-called psychology of
space, especially with sufficient faith in authority, might make
such a map a permanent part of our mental furniture. But
as an account of genesis, it is gross mythology, which lacks even
picturesqueness.

The ingenious explanation, by some psychologists, that the
absence of any such psychological furniture in our actual
consciousness is due to the law of economy, is of course equally
a priori. It certainly must still be shown that anybody nor-
mally develops such a map, whether tactual or visual. At any
rate, when we are in a position to introspect, it does not exist.
I cannot discover even a word image except as it is artificially
produced or called forth as a result of expectancy. When I
catch myself in the act, I do not find anything of the kind.
If you say that I have had this content, but that it has dis-
appeared, that, at least, ought to be proved. The recollection
from a previous existence, and almost any other psychological
theory of genesis might be proved in the same way.

Our theories of space must be rewritten largely in biological
terms. The coordinations of the reactions of the human in-
fant, as in the animal, are primarily a physiological matter,

212 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

with the difference that while in the chicken, for example, the
coordinations develop largely in response to intra-organic
stimuli before birth, in a human being extra-organic stimuli
play a much greater role. But the coordinations, in either
case, such as defensive movements, grasping, sucking, the
coordinations of the various sense-organs with each other,
walking, etc., are primarily organic adaptations. How far
trial and habit enter in to make definite such organic adjust-
ments must be ascertained by scientific observation. "In the
human infant, walking seems, from such observations as have
been collected, to occur at the proper age without training or
unsuccessful efforts." x The cerebellum is the great coor-
dinating center of muscular movements. It is "fundamentally
an expansion of the local center of the vestibular branch of the
eighth nerve." 2 Whether the semicircular canals furnish any
sensations or not, their prime function is evidently to furnish
stimuli to the cerebellum which has both a tonic function, and
the function of being an organ of equilibrium. "The cerebellum
is an organ where are gathered together sensory impulses
from all the muscles of the body. In this way, the cerebellum
receives information, as it were, regarding the condition of every
muscle ; in it is formed a sort of representation or reproduction
— though so far as known, not attended with consciousness —
of the dynamic condition of the entire musculature. To this
is added the very important function provided for by the re-
ceptors of the inner ear, which responds to the positions and
movements of the head in space. Thus the postures, move-
ments, muscular tensions, and external strains exerted on the
body at every movement, act on the cerebellum, and through
it reflexly on the muscles." 3 In regard to the differential
quality in our response to position, "the most that can be said
is that perception of position is due to some peculiar quality or
motor connection that each point on the skin or retina pos-
sesses." 4 But this quality, so far as the skin is concerned, is
not apparent to introspection, and as regards the retina, would
appear to be largely speculative. If such a differential cannot

1 "Elements of Physiological Psychology," Ladd and Woodworth, p. 157.
* Ibid., p. 156. » Ibid., p. 156.

4Pillsbury's "Essentials of Psychology," pp. 163-164.

PSYCHOLOGICAL AND GEOMETRIC SPACE 213

be discriminated by the expert psychologist, how can we ex-
pect the untrained man, who is not even looking for it, to judge
on the basis of it ? Evidently, the nervous system, whether it
is the cerebellum or cerebrum, or some other center that is
concerned, has a discrimination far keener than our conscious-
ness. It seems clear that we must assume organic perception -
and organic memory to account for such adjustments. So far-
as correlating these differentials into definite directions and
distances, all that we know about it is that it is due to move-
ment. Through a trial and habit process, in which conscious-
ness may not be present, and when present may be merely
a spectator, or at most a cue for certain reactions, the parts
of the organism become more definitely adjusted to each other,
and to the external perspectives. One thing is certain, when
we are in a position to introspect, the principal coordinations
to our space world are a motor affair.1

A striking argument against the intellectualistic theories of
space perception has been furnished recently through some
researches by Francis B. Sumner.2 It was found that the flat-
fish, without any possibility of comparison, copies on its back
the hue and (within certain limits) the geometric pattern of
the bottom upon which it is placed. This is done through the
flatfish's eyes. It is a trial and error process where practice
greatly shortens the process. It is a selective adaptation which
takes account of only part of the visual field; and since the
comparison of patterns is by the spectator, and not by the
flatfish, it does not seem necessary to assume consciousness.
While one must be careful about carrying the analogy whole-
sale into human space perception, we may well suppose that
the fundamental space categories are the result of the direct
action of the environment without consciousness being neces-
sarily involved. Our intuition of three dimensional space is
doubtless due to the stimuli to which the organism must respond.
The innateness of the straight line may, in the first instance, be
due to the fact that light travels in straight lines, though

1 Delabarre has shown the importance of eye movements in our taking ac-
count of direction. But it is not clear that either the stimuli or the taking
account are conscious processes.

2 Journal of Experimental Zoology, 10, No. 4. For an excellent summary
see W. B. Pitkin in "The New Realism," pp. 397 ff.

214 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

survival advantage would tend to fix it. There is no reason
to suppose that the human organism differs essentially in such
reactions from the plant, for example, which reacts by definite
tropisms. Should the plant become reflective, it would doubt-
less find the fundamental categories of space orientation as a
part of its constitution.

It is hardly necessary to point out that our space conscious-
ness, as we find it in adult introspection, is a highly conven-
tionalized affair, and shot through with conceptual elements.
In the process of social interpretation and adjustment, we
come to abstract from our individual perspectives of nearer
and farther. The various perceptual contents are spread out
into a common scheme. The two heterogeneous types of " signs,"
furnished by sight and touch, are translated into common re-
actions in the service of our practical interests. Loci are di-
vested of their purely egoistic reference. Different astronomers
in different parts of the world can direct their telescopes to the
same point in the heavens, and different geographers can
cooperate in piecing out the map of the earth.

But such a perspective scheme, we must remember, is an
artificial equivalent and not, as such at any rate, real. The
map of England, with its dots and colors, the astronomer's
squares and circles, the physicist's measures of footrules and
yardsticks, are convenient substitutes for the actual relations
and distances; but no one would maintain that they are the
real thing. Even though perceptual symbols are used, as in
the case of the map, the particular scale has nothing to do with
the truthfulness of the map. It may be any scale, so long as it
corresponds to the actual relations. With such a space con-
struction, we have no quarrel so long as its phenomenal char-
acter is recognized. We do find it convenient for social pur-
poses to construct such a system of artificial shorthand for the
real interactions of things. What we must insist is that such
a conception means something more than the phenomenal
equivalents with which it deals; that it serves to symbolize
real externality or distance which the will must acknowledge,
and for the sake of which it invents its system of artificial
equivalents. Such a space conception, then, just because it
is convenient, must point to some characteristic of the real

PSYCHOLOGICAL AND GEOMETRIC SPACE 215

world which furnishes the necessity for such spreading out, how
artificial soever the ideal equivalents may be.

Geometric Space

It is in connection with mathematics, particularly geometry,
that the nature of systems has been most clearly worked out.
Whitehead, in his "Introduction to Mathematics," speaks of
three concepts as fundamental in mathematics — variables,
form, and generality. By generality is meant that entities
and relations can be taken over and over again in the variety of
successive and simultaneous contexts. This characteristic we.
have spoken of before as recurrence, which is the name Poin-.
care prefers. It does justice to the empirical fact that ex-
perience is a moving quantity, at the same time that it has a
certain simultaneous complexity.

If we turn now to the aspect of elements or variables in
geometrical constructions, we find that these present a wide
range of choice to the geometrician. Since the organizing re-
lation of geometrical order is that of before and after, which
implies the relation of between, we can see that any entities which
will satisfy this relation consistently with our postulates will
serve the purpose. Such entities may be points, lines, solids,
or numbers in accordance with our convenience. The real
numbers furnish a mathematical continuum which satisfies
all the demands of geometrical systems. In any case, our units
are conventional so far as geometry is concerned. It is true,
indeed, that they are derived from experience and the geo-
metrician may, for the time being, turn psychologist. He may
show, as Poincare has shown, that mathematical research, like
all research, starts with intuition, even though it does not use
intuition as a criterion of its validity. Our sense space, whether
of sight or of active touch, does furnish us a manifold which can
be spread out in various dimensions in accordance with the
direction of differences implied. In the case of our sight space,
we may arrange the variations of the pure color hues from red
to yellow, yellow to green, green to blue, and blue to red along
four axes so as to form a square. We may again arrange
our grays in a linear dimension from the darkest black to the
lightest white. We may also vary our color hues as regards satu-

216 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

ration by moving them along the linear axis, which symbolizes
the variations of brightness. Thus our artificial scheme for
symbolizing the variations of light sensations gives a six-
dimensional manifold ; but it is not geometry. The color quali-
ties are not mere functions of position in a series. They are
physical facts with a character and extension varying with
physical (including physiological) conditions. The construc-
tion of series is an after-thought. It is the qualities which
determine the series and not the series the qualities. While
there is psychological continuity in the graduated series of
color qualities based on indistinguishables, this is very dif-
ferent from the concept of mathematical continuity. A finite
manifold, consisting of a definite number of qualitative posi-
tions, could not furnish a basis for geometrical continuity.
Moreover, physical colors vary with displacement, changing
their quality with the direction of movement, while geometry
demands that displacement shall make no difference to the
entities involved, that is, it assumes free mobility. Nor will
the situation be improved if we take the actual perspectives of
the senses. In both our sight and our touch space, we must
conceive certain qualitative differences, due to locality in the
field, while geometry assumes a homogeneous space. But while
the constitution of our sense manifolds does not make it possible
to use them as bases for geometry, it is still true that they are
the background of intuition which gives meaning to our ab-
stractions; and the practical value, at any rate, of these ab-
stractions is to furnish models which we can use in our concrete
sense world.

How dependent geometry is for its starting point upon the
world of intuition can easily be shown by an examination of
the three general axioms which underlie all geometry. These
may be stated, for our purpose, as diversity of position or ex-
ternality, free mobility, and dimensionality. In each case, it
is the background of intuition which gives meaning to our
abstractions. Our geometrical positions are, in the first in-
stance, abstractions from our sensations of movement, on the
one hand, and from the substantive qualities which mark the
termini of these movements in concrete perception, on the other
hand. We can abstract from the specific qualities, and we have

PSYCHOLOGICAL AND GEOMETRIC SPACE 217

then the pure positions which have nothing as such to differ-
entiate them, but must be defined entirely with reference to
their external relations. Free mobility is derived in the first
place from the intuition of the unimpeded movements of our
limbs, however much we must abstract from this consciousness
to get our pure geometric limit. Dimensionality is first of
all a matter of the necessity of our biological reactions — in-
grained into our nervous system by survival selection, and
symbolized by the three spirit levels of the semicircular canals,
as well as other compensatory organic adjustments. It is
clear that our bodily movements are a basic factor in the
genesis of our notion of space. This has been well stated by
Poincare : "For a being completely immovable there will be
neither space nor geometry : in vain would exterior objects be
displaced about him, the variations which these displacements
would make in his impressions would not be attributed by this
being to changes of position, but to simple changes of state ;
this being would have no means of distinguishing these two sorts
of changes, and this distinction, fundamental for us, would have
no meaning for him."1

Geometry, today, prefers the analytic method, in deriving its
elements, to the synthetic method used by Euclid. The syn-
thetic method starts with the point as the unit. Two points
uniquely determine a line, three points determine a surface,
and four points, a solid. This procedure is plainly circular.
Points must in turn, be defined as determined by lines, lines
as determined by surfaces, and surfaces by solids. At each
step, therefore, we presuppose the very entity which we are to
define. We cannot possibly derive our more complex units
from the simpler ones. Cayley proposed to remedy this diffi-
culty by introducing the concept of motion. By moving a
point, we get a line, by moving a line, we get a plane, by moving
a plane, we get a solid. This amounts, however, to our falling
back upon our concrete intuition of the empirical solid. Having
abstracted from its empirical character and conceiving it as a
rigid solid, we can derive from this the concept of surfaces as its
abstract boundaries, we can conceive lines as the abstract
boundaries of surfaces, and points as the abstract boundaries

1 "The Value of Science," p. 48.

218 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

of lines. But in any case, our geometrical entities are concep-
tual limits, and for geometrical purposes may be taken as con-
ventions, just as other sciences take a certain starting point
for granted. The derivation of the elements is primarily a
psychological question. This is equally true of the socalled
a priori character of our fundamental geometric categories.
We may have reason to believe that such geometric concepts
as externality and the straight line have an organic basis, and
are in this sense presuppositions of our perceptual adjustments,
but this is a matter for psychology to determine. For geometry,
they are conventions to be defined in its own way, and for
its own purposes.

It may be well to point out that the socalled non-Euclidean
geometries are as dependent upon our concrete intuition for
their content as are Euclidean geometries. Poincare" has shown
that the so-called Euclidean spaces can always be translated
into terms of Euclidean geometry. This preestablished har-
mony is due simply to the fact that the various geometrical
systems, in so far as they stand for real content, are all abstrac-
tions from our perceptual space experience. As a matter of
fact, experience gives us all sorts of curvature. The non-
Euclidean geometries, based upon positive or negative curva-
ture, have their rise as truly in experience as the Euclidean
elements, and would even seem to have the perceptual advan-
tage since such elements as straight lines are not verifiable in
the world of perception. Which type of geometry we shall
use for practical purposes is of course a question of convenience
for purposes of instrumental description. And here, the Eucli-
dean seems to possess the advantage. So far as the variation
of dimensions is concerned, we can find the basis for four or
more dimensions in our actual experience even though our
physical space seems determinable by three systems of coor-
dinates. Poincare" shows that, if, with the variations in space,
we always had variations in temperature, the latter would
furnish the basis for another system of coordinates. The
number system, with its complexity of qualitative variations,
gives us the basis for an indefinite number of dimensions. So
long as we emphasize merely the order character of our space
concepts, the number of dimensions should furnish no par-

PSYCHOLOGICAL AND GEOMETRIC SPACE 219

ticular difficulty ; and the number three is no longer particularly
sacred. Geometric space is anything that thought and imag-
ination choose to constitute it. On its amorphous background,
we can construct our systems at will in accordance with our
postulates.

As regards its method, geometric space is simply a matter of
logic. If we choose to make certain assumptions, a logical'
system can be built upon these. It may be of one, two, three,
or of n dimensions; it may be qualitative or quantitative;
it may presuppose any kind of curvature or the absence of it ;
it involves as many axioms as we choose to have; these may
be less, or they may be more than those of Euclid, though as
a matter of nomenclature, the question may be raised as to
how far the term geometry should be applied to such construc-
tions. It is simply a display of poetic imagination within the
self-imposed rules of logic. It is no more the concern of the
philosopher than any other product of poetic inventiveness,
"Alice in Wonderland," for example. But, however much
geometry may outstrip our humble sense world in its abstract
procedure, and however imposing may be the logic of its method,
it must always keep humble by remembering that it derives its
content from experience; and that however unlimited may
be its field, once it has set sail on the sea of pure abstraction,
it only touches reality again when it returns to the necessities
of concrete activity. And apart from its play value as a logical
game, it must also prove an instrument in the realization of our
purposes in the actual world. Within their own abstract
domain, the mathematical ideals are posited as limits by our
constructive will, and have no reality except as we thus posit
them.

The critical modern study of geometry, however, if it has
thrown no new light on the nature of things, has thrown a great
deal of light on the nature of thought. On the critical side it
has had an immense value as a solvent in destroying not only
mathematical dogmatism, which was the longest to hold out
against the critical spirit, but dogmatism as regards other
"eternal verities" as well, which pointed to the axioms of
geometry as their type and their warrant alike. The old
bulwark of a priorism has at last been shattered. On its con-

220 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

structive side, its chief contribution has been the clearer con-
sciousness of the nature of systems.

If we examine a little more closely into the form of geometric
systems, we find that the postulates which we assume must
satisfy the following criteria of logical definition : in the first
place, they must be independent, i.e. they must not overlap
each other, and they must be capable of being taken as simple
for the purpose in question. In the second place, they must
be consistent with each other. We cannot conceive a contra-
dictory world. In the third place, they must be sufficient.
They must be capable of uniquely determining the system which
we have set ourselves to construct.

If we try to determine now what geometric postulates will
satisfy these criteria, we must be guided here by the specific
purpose that thought sets itself. In other words, it depends
on what sort of geometry we want. There are some axioms,
however, that seem to be implied in all geometric constructions.
These, we have seen, are the axioms of discrete or external
positions ; of free mobility or displacement without change of
state, i.e. with no other difference than change in position;
and dimensionality or the possibility of ordering our material
into different series. Besides these general characteristics,
each system of geometry adds its own unique characteristics.
Thus metric geometry implies the straight line. Euclidean
geometry adds certain empirical axioms which are borrowed
from the physical space, in which we make our predictions and
physical experiments. Euclid's definition of the straight line
as the shortest distance between two points, his axiom of
parallels, his axiom of three dimensions, his definition that
two straight lines cannot inclose a space — these inust be
treated as empirical laws in the sense that, while they seem to
hold within our physical space, they are not essential to metric
geometry in general. There seems to be no reason, however,
why they should not be treated as conventions, and be used
as a legitimate basis for geometric construction.

It must be clear now that the only necessity which geom-
etry knows is the necessity of logic. If we choose to work
out a certain type of system, we are bound accordingly
by logical rules to see to it that our postulates fulfill the

PSYCHOLOGICAL AND GEOMETRIC SPACE 221

proper logical criteria within the constitution which we have
selected.

So far as geometry is concerned, the temporal order presents
no unique problem. If we spatialize it, as has commonly been
done, into a line, then whatever holds for linear space, whether
taken qualitatively or quantitatively, would hold for the
spatialized temporal series. So long as we conceive the tem-
poral order as an abstraction within which the present is merely
a point which is posited by our thought, and from which we
can proceed indifferently either backward or forward, as within
geometric space, there is no reason why we should not geo-
metrize our temporal order. It is not necessary to point out
that this conception is entirely inadequate to the actual tem-
poral world where movement implies more than mere change
of position in a series, and where empirical novelties and con-
stancies become the object of interest. But geometry is no
more concerned with the real temporal world than with the
real spatial world. Its game is a game of logic. It is true that
the physical scientist can select among mathematical models
such as will enable him to manipulate or anticipate his facts.
Mathematics does furnish a convenient framework for em-
pirical science. But this is not the concern of pure mathe-
matics, and is often best accomplished when most remote from
the intent of the mathematician. It goes to show that our
world is on the whole a logical world, or at any rate, a world
where the ideals of logic are relevant.

We may agree with Keyser that, in whatever sense Euclidean
geometry can be said to exist, in the same sense can the other
types of geometry, such as n-dimensional, be said to exist. But
this amounts to saying that the reality of geometry is merely
that of abstract logic, and that existence for geometry means
merely the consistency of propositions with each other, and
with the postulates of the special system. It has nothing to
do with empirical existence. To quote from Whitehead :
"All branches of pure mathematics deal merely with types of
relations. Thus, the fundamental ideas of geometry (e.g. those
of points and of straight lines) are not ideas of determinate en-
tities, but of any entities for which the axioms are true. . . .
They do not refer to a determinate subject. . . . The axioms

222 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

are prepositional functions. When a set of axioms is given,
we can ask (1) whether they are consistent, (2) whether
their existence theorem is proved, (3) whether they are
independent." 1

We may agree with Kant to the extent of regarding geometric
space as ideal. Its form is the form of thought itself ; and only
in this sense does it predetermine our investigations. Looked
upon as instrumental to our empirical world, mathematics serves
beautifully to illustrate the three meanings of the term ideal.
Ideal may mean an a posteriori and convenient fiction. This
is illustrated in such conceptions as the trajectory of motion,
and in Kepler's squares. The movement of the cannon ball
does not really consist in the trajectory, though it is convenient
for us to conceive such a line in space for its description. In the
real movement there is the impulse which spends itself, and
which, on the plate of our memory, or perhaps of the physical
camera, leaves the record of a path in space. The movement
itself is a unitary affair, and cannot be dealt with except for
purely artificial purposes, as a series of static positions. Kep-
ler's laws have been a convenient fiction for describing real
planetary motions ; and, latterly, we have come to look upon
the law of gravitation as a convenient approximation. Again,
the ideal may be an abstraction from the real context. The
geometric constellations may be a real aspect of the dynamic
relations. The straight line seems to be a reality in the world
of physical motion. Light seems to move in straight lines ; and
so do all known entities, except in so far as they are influenced
from their direction by other interfering energies. Geometric
distances are real aspects of the physical world, for energies
vary with the distance. Geometric shapes and numerical ratios
must be taken account of in the empirical description of our
world. Even linear direction must be taken as real, an aspect
of an energy system, as is plainly seen, for example, in the case
of inertia. Energies oppose less inertia to energies acting at
the right angle to their direction than to those that act in an
opposite direction. It is only as conceptual abstractions that
such properties become conventional and inert. The concep-
tual ax does not cut real wood nor do our conceptual shapes,
'Article, "Geometry (VII)," Encyclopaedia Britannica, llth ed.

PSYCHOLOGICAL AND GEOMETRIC SPACE 223

lines, and patterns effect physical changes. As aspects, how-
ever, of energy systems, they become both real and effective.
Descartes was not wrong in emphasizing the reality of the
geometric characteristics of things. His error lay in neglecting
other characteristics such as inertia. Finally, the ideal may
figure as a formal limit to the empirical world. Our empirical
observations may only approximate to such limits; and yet
we are bound by the constitution of our minds to postulate
them; and they may indeed, as Plato pointed out, be more
real than our halting empirical approximations. In all three
cases of the term ideal, mathematics seems to play a part in
our dealing with the facts of our experience, — sometimes as
a purely instrumental fiction in the service of our description ;
sometimes as abstract though real relations within our world ;
sometimes as certain logical and aesthetic norms which we de-
mand that the universe shall respect. In the broad sense that
the universe is a coherent and logical world, we may say that
the universe geometrizes, however faulty may prove our own
provisional generalizations.

The most brilliant of modern idealists has striven to give
geometric perspective space a real existence in his final concep-
tion of reality. In Fichte's "New Exposition of the Science
of Knowledge," space becomes the "permanent, absolute con-
templation," "which, however, presupposes itself as absolutely
being to itself according to the demonstrated law of the reflec-
tion of consciousness. It is the on-itself-reposing, firm glance
of intelligence, the resting immanent light, the eternal eye
in-itself, and for-itself." And again: "The substantial, solid
and resting space is, according to the above, the original light,
before all actual knowledge, only thinkable and intelligible,
but not visible, and not to be contemplated, as produced through
freedom." The construction of space is secondary, " a taking
hold of itself on the part of light, a self-penetration of light,
ever from one point and realized within knowledge itself; a
secondary condition of light, which, for the sake of distinguish-
ing it, we should term clearness, the act enlightening." And
truly it needs enlightening. What is significant for our pur-
pose is that space becomes for Fichte the self-intuitive eternal
system of truth, which for him amounts to reality. It is not

224 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

merely the type of the eternal, but it is the eternal ; not merely
the valid, but the real. Perhaps Fichte is right, that if we are
to translate space into terms of one eternal self-contemplation,
such must be its meaning. But that loses whatever of meaning
space has for us. It reduces it to a mere spaceless eternal
perspective.

CHAPTER XIII

THE NATURE OF REAL SPACE

WE have, in the previous chapter, examined into the pre-
suppositions of space construction, and found that these must
be expressed first of all in biological terms. We next took
up the ontogenetic side of our space perception, and found
that the content, in so far as it exists, is probably concomitant
to the going on of the growth process, determined by the phylo-
genetic tendencies, and intra- and extra-organic stimuli.
What actual content there is, moreover, must be determined
by statistical inquiry, and not a priori. We then examined
into geometrical construction, and found this to be a matter
of logic, and to be conducted as any free logical inquiry. The
ideals, however, of mathematics, as other ideals, seem to have
a phylogenetic basis. Lastly, we examined into the conception
of space, as perspective, by metaphysical idealism. When
regarded as phenomenal, we had no reason to quarrel with this
view. When, however, translated into terms of absolute
idealism, as by Fichte, space loses its significance.

We must now turn to the other aspect of our concept, and
try to discover what real space means, or what difference it
makes in our accounting for the facts of experience. The
series aspect of space, we have agreed, is ideal construction.
Points exist only as we posit them as the ideal pegs on which
we hang our qualitative world. To make up a real world of
such ideal points, is absolute nonsense. But what remains
after we abstract from this series character? Nothing at all,
some would answer. Zeno is right that space is no thing.
Neither are the positions in space things. They are our ideal
abstractions for our convenience. But though space is no
thing, we shall try to show that it is not a merely ideal nothing,
but a real entity which conditions not only subjective construc-
tion, but real action as well.

225

226 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

Proofs of the Existence of Space

First of all, such a space zero is perfectly conceivable. The
modern study of number has shown us that the conception of
nothing does not equal no conception. The zero of the number
series is of basic importance in the whole conception of number ;
and as the number series is not intelligible without it, the number
zero possesses all the reality of the series which it limits. But
we can conceive pure space, as we conceive the number zero,
as a limit by abstracting from the contents of space or the things
in space. Hence, space must be as real as the things in space.
It is a matter of surprise that while the importance of the zero
concept for number has received so much attention in recent
times, the importance of the space zero, which both chronologi-
cally and ontologically is more fundamental, should have been
ignored. But the reason for this can be found in the fact that,
since Kant, thought has been more interested in its own ma-
chinery than in its objective conditions.

It is Parmenides who first builds a philosophy on the impossi-
bility of conceiving empty space, and, consistently with that,
outlaws motion. Failing to form a picture of pure space, he
would forever taboo it as "unspeakable." We can have only
filled space, the homogeneous, spherical plenum. "There is
no more of it (being) in one place than in another, to hinder it
from holding together, nor less of it, but everything is full of
what is. Wherefore all holds together ; for what is, is in con-
tact with what is." Empirical proof, Parmenides would scorn ;
the mere inconceivability is enough. And so originated the
thesis : nature abhors a vacuum, which certainly does not
seem to be the case with the people's minds who have un-
questioningly accepted this a priori statement in spite of the
facts to the contrary.

I have pointed out elsewhere that a priori inconceivability
as regards existence is a matter of custom. It was once in-
conceivable that men could sail outside the Pillars of Hercules ;
that there could be more than seven planets, etc. But in all
those cases, a priori inconceivability has given way to facts.
And so it must in regard to pure space. While we have
invented media with all sorts of contradictory properties to

THE NATURE OF REAL SPACE 227

save our customary conception of motion as mechanical im-
pact, we have finally come to the realization that the facts are
simpler than our theories, and that if we dispense with our
hypothetical media, we shall have all the results without absurd
assumptions. As Professor L. T. More says : "Direct evidence
shows that kinetic energy is propagated through what experi-
mentally must be regarded as empty space. This energy,
called heat and light, passes to the earth from the sun, but is
neither absorbed nor otherwise modified, until ponderable
matter is encountered." * Pragmatically, space must be known
through the difference it makes to the energies which traverse
it. And this difference is a real difference, distinct from energetic
reactions. We have passed from the stage of judging space
a priori, to determining its existence and character by the
actual difference it makes to behavior. It might be remarked,
however, that if motion is a priori inconceivable without an
absolute plenum, it is certainly a priori inconceivable in such a
plenum — unless the plenum makes no difference, and then it
is pragmatically indistinguishable from pure space, and scien-
tifically superfluous. A relative plenum, the evidence indicates
— space shot through with energies, where, however, we can both
theoretically and physically abstract from the energies, and
approximate pure space. One thing is certain, on no theory
of the physical world can we get rid of the problem of energetic
diversity, and of empirical distance as making a difference to
interaction, whether it be in our conceptions of the constitution
of the stellar constellations, or of the minute energetic constella-
tions of electric charges within the atom. In any case energy
does not abhor spatial distance, but implies it.

Once having shown the conceivability of pure space, we must
prove its existence, as we prove the reality of any other entity,
by showing its convenience for describing the facts of experience.
The criterion of the reality of our concepts is everywhere the
same : Does the concept work ? Does it make experience
simple, consistent, and intelligible? Must we act as if it were
so? We must not start by assuming space to be a thing-in-
itself, but judge it by its properties as required by practical
experience. How blind the dogmatic method can make us is

i Hibbert Journal, Vol. VIII, p. 816.

228 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

well illustrated by Russell: "Assuming that there is physical
space, and that it does correspond to private space, what can
we know about it? We can know only what is required, in
order to secure the correspondence. That is to say, we can
know nothing of what it is like in itself, but we can know the
sort of arrangement of physical objects which results from their
spatial relations." 1 But when we know this, don't we know
the nature of space?

Kant argues that we cannot prove the existence of empty
space, because we can have no intuition of empty space : "We
see, therefore, that experience can never supply a proof of
empty space or empty time, because the total absence of reality
in a sensuous intuition can itself never be perceived, neither
can it be deduced from any phenomenon whatsoever, and from
the difference of degree in its reality ; nor ought it ever to be
admitted in explanation of it. ... As every reality has its
degree which may diminish by infinite degrees down to the
nothing or void, there must be infinitely differing degrees in
which space and time are filled." 2 If space is not a thing, it
must be clear that pure space could not be perceived, since per-
ception is an energetic relation of stimulus and organism. Nor
could we note degrees of its presence or absence, since it is not
an energetic quantity. We can, however, verify it through
experience indirectly, as we succeed in abstracting from the
energies which ordinarily fill it. The vacuum of the receiver
is noticed by the absence of sound. The infinite degrees
which we must pass through to arrive at the absence of any
energy are a matter of mathematical description, and do not
prevent us from actually exhausting the real energies.

We must conceive of pure space as the precondition of filled
space, as the limit of exhaustion, which, moreover, we can
approximately attain. If by exhaustion, we could get the
space zero without content or resistance, it must have been
real all the while. It is not necessary to the reality of pure
space that it should actually exist separately or empty. We
cannot get the quality of blue separate from all other facts,

1 Bertrand Russell, "The Problems of Philosophy," p. 49.
* " Critique of Pure Reason," Transcendental Analytic : Anticipations of Per-
ception, p. 141, Max M tiller's translation.

THE NATURE OF REAL SPACE 229

yet we do not therefore deny its existence. If we can approxi-
mate pure space as a limit, it must be just as real as though
it existed separately. The nearer we succeed in such abstrac-
tion, the better we can ascertain the properties of pure space.
These properties we can even now predict as limits. It is
convenient, therefore, to conceive of pure space, whether
empty or filled. Only with reference to it can relative emptiness
or relative resistance have meaning. To illustrate, let us as-
sume that hydrogen gas is the only gas that passes through
platinum. Suppose, then, that we have a vessel of platinum
filled with pure hydrogen gas. Let this escape, and what is
left?

The usefulness of the concept of spatial intervals within the
minute structure of the atom itself has recently been shown
by Professor T. W. Richards. That the atom is not the absolute
plenum which Democritus took it to be, but is a composite
constellation, has been proved from radio-active phenomena.
Professor Richards proves the same from the simple facts
of the compressibility of solids. To quote his own statement :
"The idea that atoms may be compressible receives striking
confirmation from a recent investigation concerning the small
effect of low temperatures on the compressibility of metals.
The average compressibility of aluminum, iron, copper, silver,
and platinum falls off only seven per cent, between the tempera-
ture of the room, and that of liquid air. Extrapolation of the
curves indicates that at the absolute zero, very little further
diminution should occur. So far as we can guess, therefore,
the hard metals are almost as compressible at the absolute zero
as at room temperatures. But at the absolute zero, all heat-
vibration is supposed to stop ; hence this remaining com-
pressibility must needs be ascribed to the atoms themselves." 1

The conception of zero space has proved convenient as a
limit in conceiving Newton's first law of motion. While this
law is an abstraction, it must be remembered that such ab-
traction is empirically possible to a certain extent. The ab-
straction, therefore, is not merely ideal. On the contrary,
it is real conditions which we must deal with in treating of
resistance and motion. I cannot see how a merely ideal limit

1 Address before London Chemical Society, 1911.

230 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

could make any difference to actual movement. Mathematical
points, lines, and surfaces, while legitimate abstractions, neither
obstruct nor facilitate movement. They only exist in our
ideal dimension. Even if we have not been able to get abso-
lutely empty space, we can, as already shown, approximate to it
and predict definitely what would happen if we could get it.
The only problem is : Are we compelled to assume such an
entity in order to account for the facts of experience? By
postulating pure space, we find it easier at any rate to account
for the forms of motion as they actually take place owing
to the resistance and diversity of the physical world. The
convenience of the conception must indicate that it has a
I foundation in the real, otherwise it could not be empirically
approximated as well as hypothetically useful. |t isjthe real
limit which makes our conception relevant.

Ev^h~gebmetfy"iir "assuming free mobility as one of its few
remaining axioms, shows that it means by space something
more than series, for free mobility is the very precondition of
space construction. If, after abstracting from things, space
itself offered resistance, geometry would not be possible. Even
in geometry, therefore, pure space is presupposed as objective
to serial construction.

The conception of space distance cannot be explained as a
property, either of things or of selves, and yet conditions the
actions of things. By distance, I do not presuppose our geomet-
rical concepts such as the straight line. A straight stick is more
convenient than a crooked stick for social measurements, but
in either case, we presuppose the externality, or side-by-side-
ness, of perceptual processes. A yard stick, while a convenient
unit, does not create the distance it measures. This differs,
moreover, from the ideal distance or stretch in our conception
of series, for example. Distance transferred to mental processes
and their externality is only a figure of speech. Space distance
is the only real distance we can conceive. All other distance
or stretch depends upon this. Number distance or tone distance
is a qualitative conception, and merely means degree of differ-
ence, or intervals in an order series. It has nothing to do with
space, except as for convenience we spread out our qualitative
differences in space. Except for space distance, however, all

THE NATURE OF REAL SPACE 231

perceptual things would have to coalesce or interpenetrate.
Pure space, then, must be real, if distance must be conceived
as real.

Without the conception of distance, both acceleration and
the limitations of intersubjective communication become un-
intelligible. Wills, appreciative selves, while not extended, are
limited by conditions which must be met and cannot simply
be brushed aside as illusions. Here lies the difference between
real distance, and the derivative conception of distance or
stretch in series such as the number and tonal series. In the
latter case, the distance or stretch is determined by the will,
is comprised within its purpose. A long stretch or a short
stretch will serve equally well to spread out its contents, so as
to indicate the direction of difference; and as the termini are
comprehended within the will's own positing, they put no
condition upon the will as regards passing from one to the other.
They are only ideally external within a unity of consciousness
which claims them equally and simul. Not so with space
distance. Here the distance which separates friends in America
and Europe, and limits their intercourse is not the creature
of their ideal positing simply ; the ideal bridging of it does not
remove the limitation to the will as in the case of two points
in a series. If it is posited by them, it is because they are
compelled to do so, and no enlightenment from Kantian idealists
serves to sweep away the limitation. In short, what makes
other egos and things objective to me, viz., their independence
of my subjective purposes, makes also space as distance ob-
jectively real to me. As I must acknowledge other egos, so
in order to realize my practical purposes, I must acknowledge
space. Space is the condition of the externality of egos, and
of things, too, whether they can be acknowledged as egos or not.
It is not a subjective, but an inter-subjective condition, limit-
ing the communication and cooperation of egos. Within the
ego, space exists at most only figuratively, as when we speak
of the space of our ideas.

We often speak, in this age of electricity, of annihilating dis-
tance. It is true that social sympathy and unity are possible
in this age to an extent they never have been before. Human-
ity? by means of the telegraph and telephone, can live a common

232 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

life to a marvelous degree. And yet it is loose language even
so to speak of the annihilation of distance, for distance does
make a decidedly measurable difference to our communication.
While the conditions of social unities have altered vastly since
the days of the proximity of tribal life, still it makes a differ-
ence to the kind of relations we can have with each other that
we are separated by distance.

Nor can we regard space as subjective, and motion as objec-
tive, the halfway house of some philosophers. If we regard
motion and change as objective, we have to regard space as
objective. This is true of qualitative change as well as quanti-
tative, as the former too would be impossible without some
kind of pluralism and externality. Melissos saw deeper than
he knew when he maintained that if there is rearrangement,
there must be empty space, even though he supposed the con-
clusion to be absurd (taboo it really had become, and has been
mostly since) and so returned to the solid block universe of
Parmenides. This he conceived as unlimited to exclude empty
space from the outside.

In explaining motion, we have found the conception of pure
space useful in two ways. First, it makes it possible to ab-
stract from bodies and resistance, and so to state Newton's
first law of motion. Secondly, it gives us the possibility of
objective distance, which cannot be reduced to the properties
of things. Reactions of things, while they are determined by
the properties of things, also vary with distance, which there-
fore, cannot be regarded as merely subjective. It is hard to
see how mere subjective position could influence the intensity
of motion. Motion in an ideal space should be consigned to
the confused limbo of square circles, mermaids, and centaurs.

Our space conception must be such in the end as to satisfy
our space intuition. While we must not invoke intuition as
explanation, yet we must always start with intuition, and the
conceptualizing process must be such as to clarify and terminate
in intuition. Where our intuitions, moreover, as in our general
reactions upon our environment, are due to survival selection,
they have, as Spencer says, well-nigh the force of demonstra-
tion, and must not be lightly brushed aside. While the space
intuition cannot be expected to separate sharply between the

THE NATURE OF REAL SPACE 233

physical and spatial character of our world, yet the unspoiled
space intuition always has insisted upon an ontological zero space
as over against physical and subjective things. Hence, the
natural part the void plays in early cosmogonic and physical
theories. However much cruder the tools of Leucippus and
Democritus than those of Kant, yet their conception of an
ontological void gives us a more fundamental character of the
space concept than the aspect of serial construction emphasized
by the Kantians.

Most important of all is the fact that this conception of space
satisfies the criterion made so much of by the epistemological
idealists themselves, and more than once implied in the pre-
ceding, viz. that those conditions which limit, and must be
taken account of in the realization of purpose, must themselves
be real. Otherwise, they would not be conditions. Space
and time must certainly be taken account of in realizing our
human purposes; therefore, they must be as real as those
purposes themselves. If they were merely illusion, or " mere
appearance," then it ought to be possible to ignore them, at least
after finding out the truth about them. Take space distance,
for example. Our measurement of this with reference to geomet-
rical ideals, such as the straight line, our use of a particular
kind of measuring rod, such as the yardstick, must, indeed, be
regarded as a matter of ideal selection and construction. But
if I live on the Pacific coast, and an important philosophical ses-
sion is held in New York, or if I want to see my friends across
the sea, the mere declaring space ideal does not annihilate the
limitation. Intermediary processes must somehow be reckoned
with; and those processes presuppose space as the condition
of their externality. Thus, space as distance conditions the
equations of the astronomer and the joy and communion of
willing selves. And so with time. No mere conversion to
absolute idealism will make new wine old, will convert youth
into old age, or make the faded flower bloom again. I do not
see how in the only world of purposes of which we know any-
thing, it is possible to ignore the space and time limitations of
those purposes. We grant that the space and time characters
taken apart are meager enough when contrasted with the
concrete life of feeling and willing. We are, indeed, in our

234 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

inmost beings willing and appreciative selves. But space and
time remain, nevertheless, irreducible limits to which we must
adjust ourselves, if we would be sane. Only by so adjusting
ourselves can we realize our purposes.

I do not insist upon a greater reality for space than for egos
or things, i.e. for energy, whatever form it may take. All
I insist upon is that we must acknowledge both types of reality.
The question whether space could exist before things could
have meaning only for those who, with the medievals, regard
the world of things as created at a finite time out of nothing —
as embodying eternal archetypes or what not. It is the prov-
ince of philosophy like science, however, to investigate the
constitution of the world, not its creation. The temporal
priority of space to things, can therefore, have no significance
for us. We can, however, abstract distance from things, and
must do so, both for purposes of physical science, and for
practical life.

Properties of Space

If space is real, we cannot determine its properties a priori,
but must ascertain them in the same empirical way as we
ascertain the properties of things. We must distinguish here
between the methods of geometry and the methods of empirical
science. In the former case, we have seen that the properties
are predetermined by the postulates of the specific system. In
the case of real space, as in regard to the empirical world
generally, the properties must be discovered inductively. "It
is true that by natural selection, our mind has adapted itself
to the conditions of the external world," as PoincarS says. It
is thus predisposed to certain types of reactions which are ad-
vantageous in the world in which we find ourselves. But this
predisposition, so far from proving space categories to be
phenomenal, as Kant would have it, would tend to show their
relevance. They have been forced upon the organism as a
result of the demands of the environment. Science, however,
cannot stop with intuition, but must supplement and correct
intuition by experiment.

The question naturally arises how we can experiment upon
space. Poincare" holds that we can only experiment upon

THE NATURE OF REAL SPACE 235

bodies, and their relations : " Experiments only teach us the
relations of bodies to one another ; none of them bears, or can
bear, on the relations of bodies with space, or on the mutual
relations of different parts of space." And again: "Your
experiments, however numerous they may be, bearing only on
the relations of bodies to one another, will reveal to us nothing
about the mutual parts of space." : This argument does not
seem conclusive. While it is true that the experiments bear
directly on bodies in space, it is also true that, indirectly at
any rate, we can know the properties of space by the differences
which they make to the reactions of bodies or other energies.
If space had four dimensions instead of three, if it were dis-
continuous, if it offered interference to motion, etc., we would
find it out in the reactions of things; and our account of
reality would have to be different. The case of space is in no
wise different from that of other entities of which we have no
immediate evidence, but which we assume and endow with
definite properties in order to account for the behavior of
entities with which we can directly deal.

While we must distinguish between the properties of real
space, and the properties which are postulated by the various
types of geometry, in some respects we can expect to find
agreement since the world of geometry is an abstraction from
our concrete experience. We must be careful, however, that
the agreement is not one of mere words rather than of funda-
mental intent. Thus, the property of externality is a funda-
mental condition, both of geometric space and real space.
Externality, however, in geometric space may have to do only
with qualitative diversity in an order series, though in metric
geometry, it seems to imply something more. It here, at
least, symbolizes distance. Externality in the case of real
space, is such as the physicist and astronomer, as well as the
practical man, must deal with in their calculations and practical
adjustments. According to Newton's law of gravitation, the
attraction of bodies upon each other varies with the masses
and inversely as the square of the distance. In all formulae
for energy reactions, distance figures as an independent and
unique variable. This is as true in our social interrelations of

1 "Science and Hypothesis," p. 60.

236 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

love and war as of light rays and stellar masses. This is quite
different from externality in a series, such as the number or
tone series. Externality, in the latter case, is merely figurative,
and indicates the direction of differences.

Geometric space, and real space are both, it would seem,
characterized by dimensionality. But here, again, the meaning
of the term may be vastly different. Dimension in geometry
has reference to different directions of variations. The number
of dimensions is determined by our postulates. When we
speak of real space as having three dimensions, we mean that
positions within it are determinable with reference to three
straight lines at right angles to each other, or the Cartesian
coordinates. Now the coordinates themselves are, of course,
conventional. Real space, so far as we know, is divided by no
straight lines at right angles to each other. These are supplied
by our mind. Some other device might do for symbolizing the
relations of bodies to each other in space. But the Cartesian
coordinates are the most convenient. And they are the most
convenient, because they enable us to adjust ourselves to the
character of real space in the simplest way. While it is not
correct, perhaps, therefore to say that space has three dimen-
sions, space has such a constitution as is determinable by the
three Euclidean dimensions. No less will suffice for our ad-
justments to the real world in space, and no more are necessary.
If an additional dimension were necessary, we should soon find
it out, as things would continually vanish out of our ken and
mysteriously reappear in our world, contrary to all our laws of
expectancy. When they seem to do so, it is hocus-pocus.
The temporal order has sometimes been spoken of as a fourth
dimension. It is, indeed, another dimension with its own deter-
minations and order, but it is not a dimension of space.

Another characteristic which geometric space and real space
seem to have in common is that of homogeneity. Space is
neutral with reference to the quantitative and qualitative
diversity of the world of energies. It has no positions or rela-
tions of its own. This implies, in the words of Simon Newcomb :
(a) " It is the same for all bodies. Wherever one body could
move, thither could any other body move." (6) "It has no
qualities or differentia dependent either on position or direc-

THE NATURE OF REAL SPACE 237

tion." l In a more picturesque way, this has been expressed
by Clerk Maxwell: "There are no landmarks in space. One
portion of space is exactly like any other portion, 'so that we
cannot tell where we are. We are, as it were, on an unruffled
sea, without stars, compass, soundings, wind, or tide, and we
cannot tell in what direction we are going. We have no log
which we can cast out to take a dead reckoning by. We may
compute our rate of motion with respect to the neighboring
bodies, but we do not know how these bodies may be moving in
space." 2 While homogeneity is a characteristic alike of geome-
tric and real space, it is a mere abstract postulate for geometry,
while it must be empirically ascertained for real space. Energies
act as if real space were homogeneous. We can satisfactorily
account for the behavior of things in space by taking account
merely of their own positions and relations. These are not
distorted in any manner by space. This makes possible free
mobility so far as space is concerned.

Real space seems to be homoloidal, that is, two parallel
straight lines may be produced indefinitely without converging
or diverging. This property it shares with Euclidean geometry
which is shaped upon the properties of real space. It is not a
postulate of various types of non-Euclidean geometry. We
may construct a geometry on the assumption of positive or nega-
tive curvature. But so far as experiments are able to ascertain,
real space has zero curvature. Light rays travel in straight
lines. To be sure, this, as other characteristics, must be taken
as pragmatic. As Clifford has pointed out, a slight departure
towards positive or negative curvature might escape our in-
struments of observation. If space and things alike had a
certain inherent curvature, it would, of course, be impossible
for us to discover. Our straight lines would in that case be
a certain standard curve which practically would mean a
straight line. We have not spoken of the supposition of pro-
jective geometry, that parallel lines meet at infinity, since this
is a mere convention to make it possible to deal with all lines
under a common formula.

Another pragmatic characteristic of space, is that of conti-

1 Article, "Space," Baldwin's Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology.
* "Matter and Motion, " Article CII.

238 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

nuity. Space seems to be the one absolute static continuum.
In a space made up of real discrete points, objects would have
to vanish, and to be recreated again at every stage of their
motion. While such miraculous occasionalism may not be
inconceivable, since it has been conceived by philosophers, it
is certainly a clumsy assumption, and violates the law of econ-
omy. Our experience seems to indicate that we have identity
within the movement. Things do not disappear and reappear,
but persist through their motion in space.

We must be careful here not to confuse the mathematical
conception of continuity, and the conception of a metaphysical
continuum. The mathematical concept of continuity is an
order concept. In the words of Fine : "The points of a right
line constitute an ordinal assemblage of points, which is called
continuous because it possesses the following attributes :
(1) Between any two points of the line there are other points
of the line (Aristotle and Kant). (2) If all the points of a line
are distributed in accordance with any given law into two assem-
blages, A and B, so related that each point in A lies to the
left of every point in B, either the assemblage A will possess a
last point to the right, or the assemblage B a first point to the
left (Cantor, Dedekind)." 1 Stated briefly, this means that
a line is infinitely divisible, on the one hand, and that any cut
of the line is common to the two divisions thus constituted. In
the case of numbers, this means that the irrationals, such as
the cube root of two, are required as well as the rationals, i.e.,
it is the series of real numbers which is continuous. The ques-
tion of ordinal continuity as thus defined is, however, a dis-
tinct question from that of the metaphysical continuum. To
quote from Poincare' : "The continuum so conceived is only a
collection of individuals ranged in a certain order, infinite in
number, it is true, but exterior to one another. ... Of the
celebrated formula, 'the continuum is unity in multiplicity,'
only the multiplicity remains, the unity has disappeared.
The Analysts are none the less right in defining their continuum
as they do. . . . But this is enough to apprise us that the
veritable mathematical continuum is a very different thing

^'Continuity (in Geometry)," Baldwin's Dictionary of Philosophy and
Psychology.

THE NATURE OF REAL SPACE 239

from that of the physicists, and that of the metaphysicians." l
The real continuum implies interpenetration of parts and not
the mere side-by-sideness of a qualitative order. We derive
our intuition of continuity first of all from our free movements
with their unity of impulse, and we then extend our intuition
to other moving continua. But all moving continua presuppose
the pure continuum of space — interpenetration without dif-
ference, the pure amorphous background upon which all our
physical and mathematical continua can be drawn. While
the present mathematical definition of continuity seems to be
satisfactory for the ordinal type of continuum, it cannot be said
to define the unique type of continuum, which we find in the
case of space.

The granular conception seems on the whole to have been
victorious in the physical world. The ether, indeed, has long
been depended upon to fill the gaps and to furnish a genuine
physical continuum. It was invented on the analogy of known
media. As sound travels through the medium of air, so it
was supposed that light must have a medium to travel through,
and this medium is consequently conceived as having the ve-
locity of light. The analogy is faulty, however, since sound is
a complex energy, while light is a simple type of energy. Again,
air waves are a genuine form of energy, which the ether sup-
posedly is not. The fact is that on this reasoning, we would
require an infinite regress. If each energy requires a medium
to travel through, then this in turn must have a medium to
travel through, and so on, indefinitely. If, moreover, the
ether has the velocity of light, then some other form of energy
of vastly higher velocity perhaps, would require a different
medium. Lord Kelvin, for example conceives gravitation as
having a velocity a million times faster than that of light.
To say dogmatically that there can be no higher velocity than
that of light, since that is the velocity of the ether, sounds rather
medieval. Furthermore, the properties of ether, as pointed out
by Karl Pearson, are far from clear and distinct. They seem
to include, side by side, the properties of absolute fluidity and
absolute incompressibility. "Treating the ether, not as a
conception, but as a phenomenon, we find it difficult to realize

1 "Science and Hypothesis," p. 17.

240 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

how a continuous and same medium could offer any resistance
to a sliding motion of its parts, for the continuity and sameness
would involve, after any displacement, everything being the
same as before displacement. . . . Finally, any relative motion
of translation as distinct from one of rotation, seems excluded
by the idea of absolute incompressibility. . . . When we pro-
ject the ether into our phenomenal world, it is at once recognized
as a conceptual limit unparalleled in perceptual experience,
and we do not feel at home with it." l The ether, as ordinarily
conceived, thus embodies two opposite limits, that of the
absolutely rigid solid, on the one hand, and that of an absolutely
fluid continuum on the other hand. The former limit is evi-
dently derived from the physical world as we know it. The
latter limit would seem to be identical pragmatically with
pure space.

If, again, we conceive the ether as granular, we must give
up the property of an absolute continuum so far as it is con-
cerned. This is not always clear to those who hold the view.
Sir Oliver Lodge, in speaking of the ether, says: "As to its
density, it must be far greater than that of any form of matter,
millions of times denser than lead or platinum. Yet matter
moves through it, without any friction or viscosity. There is
nothing paradoxical in this : viscosity is not a function of
density ; the two are not necessarily connected." 2 It is,
however, not a question of degree of density, but of the absence
of discrete units, however packed these discrete units may be.
If they act as separate impulses over any distance, we have no
guarantee of an absolute continuum ; this must be looked for
outside of the constitution thus assumed.

Another property which is implied in regard to space is that
of infinity. This property, again, must not be confused with
the ordinal infinity of mathematics which does not occupy real
space at all. The question of the infinite extent of real space
is a pragmatic one. It is certainly true for our scientific pur-
poses. However much the powers of our telescopes may be
improved, we cannot discover any limit to space. Yet this

1 "The Grammar of Science," 2d ed., p. 271.

* Presidential Address before the British Association, Science, Vol. XXXVIII,
p. 388.

THE NATURE OF REAL SPACE 241

fact can never amount to an absolute proof. Such a proof
would have to be indirect, and based on logical considerations.
It is true that we cannot conceive the contrary. While we
can conceive a limit to the physical world in space, we cannot
conceive coming to the end of the void. But, as we have pointed
out before, our ability to conceive the contrary is largely a
matter of custom with its habits of thought, and, in any case,
cannot amount to absolute proof where the constitution of our
empirical world is concerned. A more satisfactory approach
would be from our knowledge of the constitution of the physical
world. If Arrhenius is right that the physical world must be
conceived as infinite, that would also prove the infinity of space.
To quote: "The most obvious argument, however, against
the finite quantity of matter in space is the fact that the energy
of the stellar bodies in the course of infinite time would long
ago have been dissipated in empty space so that no luminous
stars could further exist." 1 Whether such an argument as
regards the give and take of energy proves the most convenient
hypothesis, science must decide. It implies the infinity of our
particular type of space. It is possible, perhaps, to conceive
that our space is insulated by another type of space with oppo-
site properties. Science, however, assumes the oneness of
space as well as its infinity, that is, that the properties are the
same throughout an infinite void. Such characters of space
are, of course, pragmatic, and capable only of empirical proof
which cannot go beyond probability. If space, moreover,
is infinite, there may be other worlds quite unknown to us,
and incapable of making any pragmatic difference to the world
as we know it. The law of gravitation and other known
laws are based upon finite distances. But perhaps, the science
of an indefinite future may have superior tools, instrumental
and logical to those known to us ; and before these, such prob-
lems as those of the infinity and unity of space may yield.
For us, these properties are in a large measure conventional,
though fitting in with our experience and congenial to the
constitution of our minds.

In addition to such properties as geometry and physics ap-
parently have in common, real space has certain properties

1 Monist, Vol. XXI, p. 173.

242 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

which seem strictly physical. Such a property is that of
absolute conductivity. Negatively stated, this means that
space offers no interference, no friction, or viscosity, to the
spread of energies such as the rays of light. Light is in no
wise interfered with, it would seem, until it strikes opaque
bodies. Positively it means that energy does flow from part
to part of the universe without loss or absorption so far as
space is concerned. The nearer we approximate to pure space
in our experiments and observations, the more perfect is the
conductivity. It is practically perfect in our vacuum tubes,
and in the interstellar spaces. Where there is interference, we
can always account for it satisfactorily on the basis of the con-
flict of energies. If the world of energies must be conceived,
whether in the gross or in the minute, as impulses acting over
distance, space becomes the conductive medium par excellence.
We are familiar with energies riding on other energies — elec-
tricity riding on material energies, mental impulses riding
on neural energies — but the world of energies, as a whole,
rides on nothing but space. And the properties of space
are such as to harmonize with the law of conservation of
energy.

Again, cosmic space is said to have the property of absolute
zero with reference to temperature. This would seem, at
first glance, to be a merely negative property — the absence
of heat, or the absence of motion. "A substance composed
of molecules at rest is absolutely cold, and no substance can
be imagined to be colder. The absolute zero of temperature
is the true zero of a thermometric scale, not the freezing point
of water or of any other substance." 1 "The absolute zero
of temperature is 273° below zero on the Centigrade scale.
The Absolute Scale of Temperature, as it is called, is thus ob-
tained by adding 273° to the temperature expressed in degrees
Centigrade." 2 While absolute zero is not heat, but the
limit as regards heat, it must, however, like zero curvature, be
taken as a real property of space if it conditions the movement
of energies in space. Thus it would seem to make a real difference
to the radiation and loss of heat. It would have to be taken
into account, in connection with such a problem as the possi-

1 Soddy, "Matter and Energy," p. 84. » Ibid., p. 87.

THE NATURE OF REAL SPACE 243

bility of communicating life germs across interstellar space.
It would seem, therefore, to be a real limit which must be
recognized in the world of behavior.

It is evident that if space is a real entity, even though not a
PP must, fl.snert.fl.in its properties empirically, as

those of other real entities. The properties we have enumerated
seem to be such empirical properties. If we can conceive such
a space, then it can be real. If we can approximate towards
it in our experiments and observations, then it must be real.
If it is implied in our practical conduct towards our world,
then we have already assumed it to be real. Whether it is
exactly as described or whether it has still other properties,
must be left for scientific experience to ascertain. In the
real world, we deal with probabilities, not with a priori cer-
tainties.

Objections to Real Space

It would not be necessary to go back to the naive objections
of Parmenides, if it were not for the hold which they have con-
tinued to exercise upon the human mind. Parmenides' objec-
tions arise from his fundamental conception of reality. For
him only inert material things are real. These, however, are
not our ordinary sense things, but intellectual abstractions.
Their only quality is their space-filling quality, or, as we should
call it, impenetrability. It is to Parmenides' immortal credit
that he foreshadows in his abstract way the conception of the
conservation of matter, and of the conservation of properties.
If we grant his premises in regard to " being," his conclusions
do credit to one of the greatest intellects of antiquity. If
inert, space-filling matter is the only reality, it follows, of
course, that empty space and empty time are "unthinkable and
unspeakable"; but this only serves to show how limited by
custom conceivability is, and how unreliable as a criterion
of reality ; and Parmenides is not the only one who has made
the impossibility of conceiving the contrary the final test. If
there can be nothing between the different parts of matter, then
matter must lie next to matter, and we have an absolute
plenum. We must agree with Parmenides that space is no
material thing ; but our intellect has been liberated from the

244 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

conception that only material things are real. We can conceive
immaterial energies, and entities which are not even energies,
such as pure space. Moreover, we no longer regard matter
as inert, but as itself a special form of energy. Impenetrability,
the only property conceded by the economic mind of
Parmenides, who scorns the wealth of sense qualities as appear-
ance, is itself an energy property, and only known in energy
reactions. It is true that the human mind has clung tena-
ciously to a plenum of some sort. But to say that a thing can
only act where it is, is to say that it cannot act at all, for in
order for one thing to act upon another, they could not be even an
infinitesimal distance apart. That means, that they must be
coincident or identical, not only as regards their gross struc-
ture, but as regards their minutest constitutents as well. In
that case, there can obviously be no motion. So if there is
motion, there must be action over distance. This would hold
equally for any medium through which things are supposed
to act upon each other. Energy is where it does work; and
there is nothing against energy radiating over pure space except
our ingrained prejudice. Custom makes it seem uncanny.
But custom is not a final criterion of reality.

The objections brought by Zeno are directed against the
Pythagorean conception of space, as made up of an infinite
series of discrete real points. Against this conception, Zeno's
brilliant dialectic is conclusive. If space is made up of real
points, then the point itself must be in a certain place. This
place, in turn, being a real entity, must be located in another
place, and so on ad infinitum. In such a space, there could be
no motion, for a body could not move where it is, nor could it
move from one point to another. To do that, it would have
to vanish and be recreated, which is not motion at all. The
arrow is stuck in its place, transfixed by its position, and it
cannot move. Nor would it help us to take large quantities
of space as our unit, since these would crumble in turn into
their non-extended components. While Zeno's arguments are
conclusive against any conception of a real serial space, it does
not affect the concept of space as we have defined it. Points
here are merely our ideal abstractions, and do not constitute
the continuum of real space.

THE NATURE OF REAL SPACE 245

Aristotle's argument against the void is an argumentum ad
hominem. It is directed against the conception of the atomists.
If we may believe Aristotle, Democritus assumed that heavier
atoms would fall more rapidly in the void than lighter ones,
and would thus collide and form a whirl. Aristotle is quite
right that pure space does not account for motion or rest ; it
accounts for no tendency downward or upward; much less
can it account for the different rates of motion as faster or
slower, in so far as we abstract from the relations of bodies.
Motion and difference of motion must be accounted for by the
constitution of the world of energies. Space is neutral to
motion except in so far as the conception of distance is involved.
Not until Newton's theory of gravitation did it become clear
what exact difference space makes in the interaction of energies.
And what Newton did in the large has since been done in the
small, as in the calculations of J. J. Thomson and others, in
regard to the interaction of the electrons within the atom. In
antiquity, Aristotle succeeded in discrediting the atomists, and
in keeping alive the crude conception of "natural places."
Aristotle's own conception is that of figured, continuous ex-
tension, "the limit of the surrounding body in respect to that
which it surrounds." Hence Aristotle's space is finite, limited
by the limits of the world, and conversely it becomes absurd
to speak of a space outside of the world, or empty space.
Aristotle, in other words, confused space with the geometric
qualities of things.

In recent times, Kant's arguments for the ideality of space
have in the main been taken for granted. It ought to be said,
however, that Kant does not regard space as an individual illu-
sion. It has validity for our social experience, though it can-
not be said to correspond to any metaphysical reality. Kant
even intimates that for a higher being with a unique power of
intuition, space would be irrelevant. Kant's own space
concept is not at all clear. He seems to waver between the
Newtonian conception of space as a neutral continuum and the
Leibnizian conception of space as a geometric system of rela-
tions; and this makes his arguments against space far from
clear. These may be stated as of two types. His argument in
the Transcendental ^Esthetic of the " Critique of Pure Reason "

246 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

is to the effect that space is ideal or phenomenal because it is
a priori. The space form, with its implications, is innate in
our mental constitution, and a condition for our perceiving an
external world at all. There is, as we have seen, an element
of truth in this. Certain space coordinations have been forced
upon the organism in its adjustment to the environment through
the evolutionary process. On these coordinations are based
the intuitions which play so important a part in Euclidean
geometry. But so far from such innateness proving space
ideal, it would seem to be a strong presumption for the reality
of our space world. And it seems to stand the test of scientific
as well as practical adjustment, when the crude intuitions
are criticized and verified, as all our intuitions of reality must
be.

The other type of argument is implied in the First Antinomy,
and is based upon the principle of contradiction. Kant holds
that if we try to conceive a world in real space, we land in an
antinomy. The thesis of this antinomy is that the world in
space must be finite, since we cannot, through any succession
of acts, synthesize an infinite manifold. This objection has
lost its force with the modern conception of infinite series. The
criterion of an infinite series is not that we cannot reach the
last term in our successive acts of counting, but that there are
collections whose constitution is such that a part of the collec-
tion can be put in a one-to-one correspondence with the whole.
This obviously cannot be ascertained by successive steps of
ordering, but must be proved by an examination of the postu-
lates which underlie the particular type of collection. The
number series, among others, is such that any part can be put
in a one-to-one correspondence with the whole. We may re-
gard Kant's thesis, therefore, as obsolete. To quote Bertrand
Russell : " Owing to the labors of the mathematicians, notably
George Cantor, it has appeared that the impossibility of in-
finite collections was a mistake. They are not, in fact, self-
contradictory, but only contradictory of certain rather obstinate
mental prejudices. Hence the reasons for regarding space and
time as unreal have become inoperative, and one of the great
sources of metaphysical constructions is dried up." l
i "The Problems of Philosophy," p. 229.

THE NATURE OF REAL SPACE 247

The antithesis of Kant's antinomy is to the effect that the
world must be infinite in space since otherwise the world would
be related to pure space, which for Kant is nothing at all. This
objection is equally irrelevant. Whether the world in space
is finite or infinite, it could hold together by its own energy
relations. An example of this is the gravitational system which
is held together, not by the attraction of space, but by the
attraction of masses upon each other where space figures as
distance, and so makes a real difference within the system. A
world finite in space does indeed raise problems, though not
the logical one of inconceivability. We have already spoken
of Arrhenius' problem of the dissipation of energy into empty
space, without compensation, in such a world. But that is a
problem of another kind from that raised by Kant, and im-
plies the reality of space.

Finally, absolute idealism has tried to rule out the existence
of space by conceiving reality as, in the last analysis, a logical
system. Now we would agree that in a purely logical system,
real space can have no relevancy. We would also agree that
logical systems must be taken account of as real aspects of our
world. The universe lends itself to logical categories. We
can formulate the facts of our world into significant systems
of relations. But we must deny that logical systems are the
only systems of our real world. However important in the field
of description, they are abstractions from the movement and
variety of the concrete world of flux. In fact, it is because
they are abstractions that they are useful in the economy of
life. The real unit of reality, we have found, is an energy
system; and in this real space figures as an indispensable
condition. This is true, not only in the world of physical
things, but in the world of personal relations as well. And these
must be taken, even by absolute idealism, as final realities, if it
is to have any reality at all.

PART IV
TIME AND REALITY

CHAPTER XIV

THE NATURE OF TIME
The Timeless l

IN order to understand better the function which time fills
in experience, we shall begin by abstracting from time and by
regarding reality as a timeless system of truth. Such a world
is of course for us as time-subjects a mere hypothetical suppo-
sition. All we can do is to abstract from our time-experience
as we have it, and conceive it as it would be with time elimin-
ated, given for the time being our distinctions as arisen by
virtue of the time-process.

Such a world would be a world of abstract dialectic, such
indeed as McTaggart conceives the Hegelian world to be; a
dialectic silent as the dance of the deaf; a dialectic without
movement or variation of attention, for ideal motion, Trende-
lenburg to the contrary, is a contradiction in terms ; a timeless
viewing, where all the stages or ideal moments exist for con-
sciousness at once, and have their fixed setting in an ideal
scheme, where reality is included and exhausted in one self-
complete and infinite definition, the Ide, the Absolute.

If we have recovered our breath, after speaking such magic
and potent words, let us see what place certain categories would
have in such a world. The concepts that would have to be re-
translated especially in such a world are the dynamic concepts.
Take for example the concept of motion. Just think of defin-
ing motion as an infinite number of intermediary positions ex-
isting at once for a subject. While you may thus shirk Zeno's
problem as to where a body is when it passes from one position
to another, or how positions can be made continuous, by
denying any passing whatsoever, you raise a still more serious

1 This section is borrowed in the main from "Time and Reality," pp. 60-63.

251

252 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

problem as to how a body can be in an infinite number of po-
sitions at once. In other words, such concepts as motion
or change would be meaningless in such a world.

Causality in such a world would have to be translated into
terms of sufficient reason or logical system. Cause and effect
would be identical and both terms would have to be dropped
out of our vocabulary as superfluous.

Attention in such a world could be merely the convergence
of an ideal system and would have to be expressed in terms of
significance. It would be the complete meaning or the con-
sciousness of the whole of itself. Variation of attention would
of course have to be ruled out. That the qualitative dis-
crimination, assumed in such a world, presupposes variation
of attention and, therefore, tune is ignored by the advocates of
the static view. We, the abstracting time-subjects, have
these contents present to us, and, therefore, can make a tune-
less synthesis of them.

Activity in such a world we should have to translate, as
Spinoza does, into adequate ideas or complete logical definition.
Possibility or impossibility would be mere logical abstractions
and meaningless, where there can be no creation out of a con-
tingent future.

Past and future in such a world would become mere attitudes
on the part of a willing subject. But the meaning has dropped
out of both of them, they are mere words, " sounding brass and
tinkling cymbal." What could the attitudes of pastness and
expectancy mean, where nothing happens?

Non-being in such a world could only mean that one fact or
form of being is not another, and the assertion of identity could
hardly be made when no question or doubt is possible. It is
the seeming flux of things that makes us demand identity. To
be honest at all in such a world we should have to eliminate at
least a good deal of our vocabulary and the corresponding
concepts and judgments.

When, however, we keep in mind that the icy grandeur of
this static fabric is the result of our own abstraction and ideal
construction, there can be no danger of being led astray. It is,
on the contrary, altogether proper to try the logical experiment
of elimination, for the purpose of discovering the value and

THE NATURE OF TIME 253

interrelation of our concepts. Abstracting certain concepts from
concrete experience only keeps them in abeyance (aufheberi),
it does not destroy them. We have all the while in the back-
ground the inner wealth of concrete meaning, which gives
value to our abstractions.

If, however, we take our timeless construction seriously, if
we hypostatize it into a world, as so many philosophers have
done, we shall land in hopeless contradictions. In a reallyv
timeless world, in a world of no activity and no process, there ]
would not only be no dynamic judgments, but no judgments at/
all. As far as we know at any rate, the arising and develop-
ment of consciousness would be impossible except for the ever
present necessity of adjustment on the part of the organism to
a complex and changing environment, in order to realize its
needs. Concepts are developed as tools by means of which
we may be able to seize upon the relatively permanent in the
fleeting changes of things and thus anticipate the future. The
psychic content becomes detached from the perception, because
the perception has disappeared, and the psychic content thus
torn loose becomes symbolic, for the reflective subject, of all
similar situations. Without time-process, therefore, we should -
have no meaning, no judgments; we should have simply the
glassy stare of the mystic One, which again is nothing except
for our choosing to posit it.

All description must indeed be abstract and timeless. Such
description is necessary for the highest possible coordination
and adjustment. Without description, social cooperation would
be well nigh impossible. There are two dangers, however,
that we must guard against.

One danger is that of being satisfied with an incomplete and
provisional description. While description is not reality, it
should furnish us with symbolic equivalents for reality. The
tuneless description has made absurd the facts it was invented
to make intelligible. But a description which lands us in
hopeless contradictions is obviously a failure. We must look
again for the elements which we have missed. We must have
faith that the universe is amenable, at least, to consistency;
and seeming contradiction must be a challenge to us to revise
and complete our ideal network of symbols.

254 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

A second danger lies in the tendency to hypostatize our de-
scription as reality. This has been the danger alike of idealism
and realism in the past. Democritus hypostatized his hypo-
thetical atoms, and Herbart his qualities, no less than Plato his
impersonal ideas and Hegel his Absolute. We must not forget
that reality at heart is individual and that, however far we may
carry our conceptual analysis and synthesis, it can never ex-
haust the " acknowledgment " of unitary wholes which only will
and appreciation can create for us. This individual core of
being must always remain a limit toward which description ap-
proximates, but which it does not reach. The conceptual func-
tion, in other words, must regard itself as the instrument by
means of which the willing and appreciative self strives to be-
come conscious of itself and to realize itself. It is not an end
in itself.

The real is the finite, the fleeting and perishable, the per-
manent is the abstract and symbolic.

This is but his shadow,
His substance is not here,

may be said of all our ideal abstractions. This means a reversal
of the idealistic emphasis from Plato down. Instead of

Alles Vergangliohe
1st nur ei Gleichniss,

I would say that the eternal or conceptual is only a poor copy
or symbol of real life.

Grau, teurer Freund, ist alle Theorie, "
Und griin des Lebens goldner Baum.

With this introduction it devolves upon us now to seek for
the missing element, which may free our above description
of reality from its contradictoriness. If we cannot eliminate
tune, what function does time play in reality? We cannot
treat it as a mere illusion, for illusions, too, must be explained ;
and it is hard to see how the illusion of time and change couH
arise in a static world. Rather must we agree with Aristotle
that motion could not originate from non-motion and so must
have an eternal basis in the nature of things. This seems to
be implied in the general scientific assumption that motion is

THE NATURE OF TIME 255

a universal property of matter, for by motion in this case
science cannot mean the mathematical concept of motion,
which implies space, mass, and time, but it means the fact of
change, the real time-character of our world.

Time and the Psychological Present

J. S. Mill, in his " Examination of Hamilton " raises the ques-
tion of how the past and the future can coexist in the present.
That they do so, he regards as a fact ; but how they can do so
he regards as an ultimate mystery. We may state the difficulty
in the form of an antinomy :

1. Such is the nature of time that when the present is, the*
past has been and the future is not yet. The present is a mere
point or ideal boundary making the past continuous with the
future, but having no duration of its own. This is the char-
acter of time which Aristotle lays down in his "Physics." 1
It emphasizes the non-being aspect of time without making a
clear distinction between this and the quantitative and serial
character. This gives us the mathematical present, which is
a mere limit or zero.

2. But the past and future must coexist in the present, else ,
how can they be contrasted in the act of judgment or mean
past and future? Past and future are for introspection present < —
attitudes. Time therefore must be an ideal order, having its
basis in the qualitative character of the present moment. This

is the horn of the dilemma emphasized by metaphysical ideal-
ism. Since our present is at best fragmentary, the total time-
order must correspond to the qualitative content of an absolute
mind in which all the moments of experience like a melody can
be intuited at once. If the former attitude gave time no ex-
tent, this attitude gives it an infinite extent; but in doing so
it loses the fundamental character of time, i.e. & sense of pass-
ing, of coming and going.

The concept of the psychological or "specious" present has
been proposed as a compromise between the attitudes already
stated. On the one hand, the present, according to this view,
is not a mere zero or ideal limit. The past and future are our
attitudes to the waning and rising processes which really do

1 Aristotle, "Physics," Book IV, Section 10.

256 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

coexist in the stream of consciousness. The present has a cer-
tain extent of duration within which the passing contents can
be held together within one span or attention-moment. This
span may vary from a fraction of a second to several seconds
in its extent, depending upon the conditions which obtain. At
any rate, the psychological present is a complex affair. In the
words of Robert MacDougall : "The whole group of elements
constituting the rhythmic unit is present to consciousness as a
single experience; the first of its elements has never fallen
out of consciousness before the final member appears ; and the
awareness of intensive differences and temporal segregation is
as immediate a fact of sensory apprehension as is the perception
of the musical qualities of the sounds themselves." 1

There seem to be two factors of which we have to take ac-
count in order to understand our psychological sense of duration.
One factor is that of attention-strain, the other factor is that of
the filling, or content of the intervals of succession. One can-
not be reduced to the other, though they may have their effect
upon each other. Our sense of duration seems to vary inde-
pendently with each. The greater, on the one hand, the
attention-strain, the longer seems the time. This can be illus-
trated by any case of tedium or frustrated expectancy. On
the other hand, the more filling, the longer seems the time.
This is true, not only in retrospect, but it is true for our im-
mediate sense of duration as well. It used to be thought that
relatively empty time seemed long and that full time seemed
short. But relatively empty time when it fills the momentary
interest, as when one dozes away listlessly for the time being,
seems remarkably short, while full time makes the duration
seem only longer for being full.

The stream of duration has been compared with the physical
stream with its bed and its moving flow. The bed in the case
of the psychological stream consists in the relatively stable
contents and tendencies; the stream is the coming and going
of contents. The permanent background of consciousness
consists in our impulses and tendencies, on the one hand, and the
mass of organic sensations, usually unnoticed, on the other
hand. The rhythm of some of the organic sensations gives

1 Harvard Psychological Studies, Vol. I, 322.

THE NATURE OP TIME 257

us a more or less constant measure of immediate duration. It
has been shown that visceral ancesthesia produces a lack of sense
of duration, while the undisturbed constancy of our organic
rhythms in passive attention gives us the original of Newton's
uniform flow of time. Again, the rhythm of the perceived
content makes a difference: "When a series of stimulations
(auditory for example) runs off without any decided rhythm
of grouping, the specious present maintains an approximately
fixed length, or, at least, the variations in its length have no
functional relation to the series of stimulations in question." l
With rhythmic stimulations, however, the pace of duration
may be shortened or lengthened ; the immediate span can be
made to contract or expand in sympathy with the rhythm of
the stimulus. It has been shown experimentally that nerve
currents respond to physical rhythms up to about five hundred
pulses per second.

Certain contents or tendencies may persist through an in-
definite number of these briefer spans and thus mark off our
sense of duration into longer periods or time-wholes. These
tendencies may be primary, as where, on the perceptual level,
certain impulses or instincts, like hunger or the migration
instinct, persist and so mark off rhythmic periods. On the
ideational level certain ideas or purposes endure through
the moving scenes of perception and imagery, emphasizing and
selecting the relevant contents, until brought to a consciousness \
of completeness. Beyond this immediate sense of duration,
however, our serial location depends mostly on indirect con«
siderations, such as the association of our flow of experience
with the artificial chronological units. We cannot rely on
vividness as the sole criterion of distance from the present.
Even in individual history some events far removed, such as
childhood experiences, may be more vivid than those that have
recently transpired.

The account of the specious present, as we have tried to
give it, is merely a statement of our consciousness of duration ;
it does not explain it. What the specious present means in
terms of content is that a certain context of content or tendency
remains practically constant, while other contents come and

1 Dunlap, The Jour. Phil. Psych, and Sci. Meth., Vol. VIII, p. 348.

258 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

go. This may be a matter of seconds or of years in accordance
with the identity of interest which spans the interval. Patho-
logically we see it in the persistent idea. Normally we have
it most clearly in the realization of purpose, where a nuclear
content furnishes the permanent leading throughout the pro-
cess of realization. The so called time-whole is the stream of
tendency controlled and bounded by a purpose, such as the
drama, college life, etc. In ordinary passive life, even when
our minds are most vacant of content, there is, on the one hand,
the background or stable nucleus of the organic sensations ; on
the other hand, certain motor rhythms of strain and release
mark off the stream and help to constitute the sense of the
specious present.

This sense of duration or stability of certain contents in the
stream of change, so far from being identical with time, as some
have maintained, is its antipodes — the eternity aspect of ex-
perience. The time character is bound up with the coming
and going, with the passing and novelty of the process. Thus
in every moment of experience, the eternity aspect of constant
and cumulative content is present together with the time as-
pect of fleetingness ; and it is on the background of this limited
eternity-consciousness that we catch the significance of time,
as it is on the background of the dark space of night that we
catch the significance of the fleeting and dying sparks.

V Time is the precondition of the consciousness of before and
after, as space is of the side-by-side. The consciousness of
before and after is the simplest consciousness of time-process,
the most immediate time relation. But it is not time any more

• than the minimum extensible is space. Rather time is the con-
dition which makes possible the consciousness of before and
after, of the sense of passing as opposed to simultaneity. Upon
this consciousness of before and after we build our artificial
framework of chronological systems, infinitely outstripping
the brief immediate span of a few seconds but none the less
deriving their content from it.

Having stated briefly the psychological aspect of the specious
present, we must say a few words about its metaphysical im-
port. What is the character of this changing process which
we thus immediately intuit? Is it continuous or is it discrete?

THE NATURE OF TIME 259

Is there one general flow of duration made up of infinitesimal
parts or is this duration essentially a discrete affair, coming in
finite drops?

That we have an intuition of a continuous duration is the
opinion of Bergson. According to Bergson l all our ideas are
in constant flux. In this flux, our psychological states are
continuous and cumulative. It is only to our attention that
they seem discontinuous and successive. It is in our im-
mediate intuition of this psychological stream that we get the
inwardness of reality. ' But by means of concepts, the intellect
tries to piece together in the form of static pictures what psy-
chologically and in fact is a continuous flow. It thus gives us
a cinematographic substitute for the movement of reality. He
contrasts time or real duration, as absolute qualitative change
and interpenetration, with space as the image of the coexistent,
quantitative, and divisible. All contents are continuously
flowing, nothing remaining constant, however infinitesimal
may be the period clasped. Our qualities are but tangents to
the ever moving stream. They do not characterize the stream.
What repeats itself is the spatialized image. The abstracting,
stereotyping intellect is thus incapable by its very nature of
taking account of reality. This can be done only by intuition,
the immediate sense of the ceaseless flow in which the contents
continually melt into each other as the tones blend into the
melody.

While Bergson, and his master Renouvier, thus assume a
continuous flow of consciousness, with infinitesimal increments
of altering variation as filling the intervals of duration, our or-
dinary psychological evidence at any rate fails to verify such
an intuition. Renouvier and Bergson have both been mis-
led by the divisibility of quantitative intervals into assuming
the continuous change of all our contents. This is a purely
a priori assumption. The divisibility of the artificial units of
time measurement has nothing to do with the change or con-
stancy of the real contents of experience. Their constancy or

1 See the beginning of "Creative Evolution." The strongest statement of
Bergaon's position as to time is to be found in his first book, " Time and Free Will."
A brilliant sketch of the temporalist development in France may be found in a
series of articles by Professor A. O. Lovejoy in the Philosophical Review, Vol.
XXI, under the heading, " The Problem of Time in Present French Philosophy.' '

260 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

change must be ascertained empirically. That some of our
contents are practically constant, the truth process itself im-
plies. Else how could we mean change?

So far from our being able to intuit infinitesimal increments
of change our ordinary consciousness of succession is decidedly
limited.1 Our conscious processes, so far as we can take ac-
count of them, come in finite drops, whatever continuity there
may be in their physiological and physical conditions. We
must here proceed pragmatically, following the leading of the
evidence and not of a priori assumptions. While Bergson has
warned us against spatializing psychological processes, this
seems to be what he himself has done. Having started with
quantitative intervals, he has proceeded to apply the infini-
tesimal calculus to the contents and to force the facts to obey
its infinitesimal rate of change. What we must do, on the con-
trary, is to discover, so far as we can, such change or constancy
as there is, and then to apply our mathematical tools so far
as may be convenient. We must take experience, as we find it,
with its constancies and its flux. Our knowledge of either is
far from warranting any assumption of absoluteness. To
dogmatize about absolute flux is only to substitute another
kind of absolute for that of the Eleatic. The former may be
more fashionable ; but it is not necessarily any more scientific.
Because we find some flux, we have no more reason to assume
absolute flux than we have for assuming absolute constancy
everywhere because we find some constancy.

1 1 undertook an experiment on the perception of sound succession, with the
cooperation of my friend Dr. Bruce V. Hill, a physicist, some years ago. The
click of a telephone was used as the stimulus. As the experiment has not yet
been published, I can here give only the preliminary results. We found that
distinct intervals could be perceived by the practiced ear up to about ik of a
second, our best record being .0064 by an expert musician. After that the
successive stimuli were discriminated from the simultaneous by the lengthened
impulse or " rasp " of the former. Toward the upper limit of any discrimination
at all, the successive stimuli furnished, not a longer sound, but a "thicker"
sound ; and to one or two musical subjects there seemed to be a slight difference
in pitch. The upper limit for any discrimination at all as between successive
and simultaneous stimuli could by practice be made much higher than that of
Exner (which was about fhs second), the highest limit with us being .00144
of a second. This, however, was not a discrimination of succession, as Exner
supposed. And even so it is a long way from an intuition of infinitesimal
transitions, which Bergson seems to assume.

THE NATURE OF TIME 261

The Temporal and the Eternal

Some of our contents as observed in experience seem to
overlap our ideal divisions of moments. On the other hand,
intuition indicates that some contents are changing. Our
quantitative intervals of duration, moreover, do not exist to
be filled by our calculus of flux or our plenum of being. They
are but a tool for describing the concrete process. An exam-
ination of the specious present brings us face to face with an
antinomy :

1. We have the intuition of flux. Contents come and go.
Our attitudes and meanings change. If it were not that our
world is a world of flux, we should have no need of science or
prediction. To try to derive this flux from a static world is
absurd. Somewhere there must be change and variation for
even the illusion of time to arise.

2. But we also have the intuition of constancy. We do
recognize contents as the same. We are able in a measure to
predict the course of process. Were there no constancy, we
should have no concepts, no science. We should neither recog-
nize our original experiences nor the pictures of our original
experiences. We should not be able to mean change or any-
thing else, for meaning implies the selection and persistence of
certain abstract contents, in terms of which the concrete
situations can be defined.

The dogmatic temporalist and the dogmatic eternalist thus
come to a draw, if not to blows. Each rests his case on intui-
tion and conviction. And intuition verifies each and belies
each in turn. If the dogmatic eternalist insists that only the
intuition of substance can be trusted and that change is an
illusion and inconceivable, the dogmatic temporalist naturally
retorts that it is only the intuition of change that can be trusted
and that constancy is somehow an artificial affair. Nor is the
situation altered by substituting for the world of the naked
senses, the world of the microscope. The values are different
to be sure, but they still furnish our intuition with the same
antinomy of change and constancy. If they didn't, we should
have no intuition at all. Perception as a subjective act implies
both process and a fairly constant context.

262 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

The only solution of the antinomy which is open to us is
the pragmatic one. We must take both change and constancy
at their face value. What saves us from contradiction is that
they do not hold in the same respect. The perceptual context
perhaps changes, while the memory context remains practically
constant. The meaning is still the same, though the parch-
ment has faded. Or part of the perceptual context is con-
stant, while part changes. The outline of the leaves and their
spatial context is the same, though they have assumed their
gorgeous autumn hues.

In our world at any rate the thirst of the will for novelty is
abundantly satisfied, but there is also an opportunity to realize
the demand for loyalty. We must take each from our finite
point of view. What is novelty to the child in its learning pro-
cess — the art of reading and writing, Mother Goose, the mul-
tiplication table — is from the point of view of the maturer
person part of the world's constant stock in trade; only the
individual value, to the beginner, is here novel. From the point
of view of a still superior experience the content which is novel
to us may be as old as the world, and what we take for con-
stant may make the angels stand back and wonder. In the
meantime we must evaluate the world from our finite point of
view.

In general what is most liable to change is the concrete,
and what we find to be most constant is the abstract. Some-
how, in the midst of the stream of concrete flow, certain forms
and qualities seem to persist. In all the variety of our thinking
the same fundamental laws hold good, and so we can have social
validity. In the midst of the endless variety of chemical
compounds with their unique individuality, certain qualities
or elements can be analyzed out, and so we can have description
and prediction. In the midst of the changes and chances of
history, certain fundamental motifs seem to be present, and so
we can read history at least backward and utilize the experi-
ence of the past in present emergencies. However much,
therefore, the concrete contexts of reality change, the abstract
ratios and laws seem to hold within the observed conditions of
the flux. For new conditions, fresh observations and general-
izations must be made. He who enters the temple of truth

THE NATURE OF TIME 263

must leave his dogmatic absolutes in the outer court, though
temperamental bias will always make this difficult.

One thing seems clear, whoever acknowledges time and pro-1'
cess to be real must be an empiricist. He must recognize
that, if time is real, it may creep into all our generalizations,
including our theory of time itself. And while time cannot
"fall on its other" and annihilate itself, it is likely to annihilate
many of those prejudices which we now mistake for truth. We
must take our truths for their practical value for the time being,
with due tolerance for other points of view.

Instead of making time have the whole thickness of reality,
as Bergson does, and insist that all our contents must flow ab-
solutely or accumulate absolutely, I have taken time as a very
thin concept. Time is not the whole of reality but an inde- ^
pendent variable or attribute of reality. But if time is an
independent variable, so is stuff, too, an independent variable.
Various ensembles change unequally because of their own in-
herent character and organization. And some characters and
relations there may be which, while they exist in the flow, still
remain independent of it. Certain logical and spatial relations
seem to be thus independent. The formula, 2 plus 2 equals
4, once discovered seems to be timeless. The secret of inde-
pendence from change lies, in any case, in the isolation or ab-
straction of certain parts from the concrete stream of individual
history. This may hold for concrete parts as well as formal as-
pects. Water imbedded in certain crystals and isolated for
the time being from the other energies of nature may remain
essentially unchanged in quantity as well as quality for thou-
sands of years. The will, embodied in certain artificial vehicles
such as the instruments of language or of marble and thus
taken out of the individual stream, retains its own individuality
unaltered, through the flux of ages. How far anything remains
finally eternal can only be made clear in the historic realization
of human purposes.

In such a world the processes of reality will change con-
tinuously or discontinuously according to the complexity of its
plural structure. We cannot deduce from the mere concept
of time which they will do. Nor can we deduce from the mere
concept of time, as Bergson does, that the process must be

264 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

absolutely cumulative, so that each moment like a rolling
snowball owns all that went before. Our finite practical ex-
perience does not seem to carry out this assumption. Is old
age the cumulative net result of childhood with its plasticity;
youth with its enthusiasm; manhood with its vigorous pur-
poses ? Our finite life is leaky somehow. It is more like a net
than a snowball. Some of it is cumulated, but the meshes get
loose and break afterwhile and life's contents ooze through.
The permanent part is the Karma, the net result of tendency.

As we float in the sea of change, whether in mystic acquies-
cence or struggling in practical earnestness with its forces, some
constancies are indeed recognized, enabling us to hold our heads
above the stream and to satisfy our need for prevision or thought.

WP mi^st. pnf. %p-P+. ]1QwPVPr1 ^flf *1™™ pnn^.anmps arP only

relevant to a universe of process. And t^p fll1pnifiy nf ^^
process, not its constancy or measure, is what, J imJaaid^TiH by
time._If we must recognize reality as having such a flowing,
passing, novel constitution; if we must orient ourselves to
our world in such a way in order to realize the purposes of life,
then such it is. And our conceptualizing faculty, instead of
demurring and saying it cannot be, must accommodate itself
to the facts. It must recognize that it is in just such a world
that it has its peculiar function of leading.

The Pragmatic Character of Time

Whether we regard space as subjective or objective, we all
agree now that space must be such as to make no difference to
the character of things in space. It enables us to spread
these out, and herein lies its convenience, but it makes no
intrinsic difference to the facts thus spread out. Free mo-
bility is one of the few axioms that critical geometry has left
standing. Logically, therefore, we can easily abstract from
space. But not so with time. Whatever theory we may hold
as regards time, it must be admitted that time alters our con-
tents, making an intrinsic and not merely an external difference.
So far from the axiom of free mobility being applicable to time,
reality, in so far as time pertains to it, is by all agreed to be
irreversible. Contents become less vivid and distinct, assume
different values and, above all, bear a different functional re-

THE NATURE OF TIME 265

lation to the present subject. This has made even those who
with Kant regard time as subjective speak of it as an irrever-
sible series, though irreversible is applicable only to process,
not to series. How a subjective form can be irreversible passes
understanding.

Leaving out all dialectic subtleties, let us try to define the
fundamental character of time.^ The difficulties besetting one's
path on such a quest are due in part to the confused character
of the concept as we find it in common-sense thinking, but still
more to the idols of the philosophic tribe. From Zeno down to
Bradley it has been taken for granted that time is serial in
nature, and the arguments for and against its reality have
always implied this serial character. Assuming time as an
order series, Kant was the first one to show that time must be
ideal. That he also regarded it as irreversible and as a condition
of moral activity does more credit to his insight than to his
consistency. Since Kant, idealism, using the Kantian weapons,
has made short work of a real serial time. I agree entirely
with the Kantians that if time is serial it must be regarded as
an ideal construction. But I also hold that philosophy has
emphasized the wrong aspect of the somewhat ambiguous
common-sense concept. The flying, fleeting, evanescent char-
acter of experience, it seems to me, is the primary character of
time. The serial character is secondary, and is the result of
a posteriori construction, necessitated by the real time char-
acter. We construct past and future because our contents
have the time character, because they are forever going and
coming ; contents do not come and go, arise and fade, because
of our series.

To define what time is we must discover the differentia of
time. We must get over our intellectual slovenliness in simply
dumping things together. This is especially true of time. We
have been too prone to be satisfied when we have reduced it to
one dimension of space, to number, to quantity, to causality,
to will, and what not, if, indeed, we have gotten beyond identi-
fying it with the stream of consciousness as a whole. No doubt
the time concept has important relations to all of these concepts.
But these relations are obscured by the neglect of differences
which fail to give the time concept any assignable significance.

266 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

Such obscurity makes time as a logical tool for describing ex-
perience worse than useless. If the time concept makes no
difference to experience, let us drop it out altogether. Using
•J the pragmatic test, then, let us see what difference time makes
to experience.

Do you say that time is a series ? Then by what mark or
quote is tune as a series differentiated from all other series con-
cepts? To illustrate by another concept, more familiar:
If you say, for example, that geometric space is a complex of
series, you have at most mentioned only the genus. This
would not differentiate it from color and taste series. If you
say with Riemann that it is a manifold, you have again fur-
nished only a large genus. Obviously what differentiates
geometric space as series from the other series or group concepts
is that it is an ideal construction of extensive data or is an ex-
tensive manifold. Extensity is thus the character that dif-
ferentiates space series from other concepts of the kind referred
to. If we now return to time as serial, we must here, too, dis-
cover precisely what difference it makes as a concept, what
marks it as distinct from other series concepts. The answer
you get when you ask : What sort of a series is a time series ?
is something like the answer of a friend when you ask him :
When are you going to Chicago ? and he replies : Who says I
am going to Chicago? Or the answer in algebra to the ques-
tion : What positive quantity results from adding 4 and — 8 ?
and you get the answer — 4. The answer here shows that the
question involved a wrong presumption. So with the answer
to the question : What are the differentia of a time series ?
The answer is : A time series is a series in which contents keep
passing out and coming in and in which no position can be de-
fined with reference to any other position, because every po-
sition is shifting in value with reference to every other. In
so far, in other words, as you want to have a series with definite
positions, in so far you must ignore the time character of ex-
perience. In so far, again, as you let in time, your serial con-
struction fails to define. The answer to the question : What
sort of a series is time? seems to be that time cannot be ex-
pressed as series at all.
We have said that the test of the nature of time must be

THE NATURE OF TIME 267

the difference it makes to experience. The term experience,
however, must be narrowed down for logical purposes. There
are several types of experience and reflective experience is only
one of these, no more real than the others. But what we are
concerned with here is reflective or judging experience. The
question is : What difference does time make to our judging
experience and to other forms as reported to this? Evidently
time bears a peculiar relation to the law of contradiction. The
law of contradiction is only applicable, as a matter of fact,
if you exclude time. The law of contradiction says that dif-
ferent judgments cannot be made with reference to the same
point in our space system and in the same respect. But that
an object can be white and, where it is white, be not-white;
that a thing can both be and not be in the same place — are
matters of everyday experience. A theory of a timeless uni- </
verse would break down under its own contradictions. Time, v'
then, is that aspect of experience which makes it both possible
and necessary to make different judgments with reference to
the same point in reality and with reference to the same at-
tribute or within the same universe of discourse, i.e. to judge
that reality is both white and not-white, warm and not-warm
with reference to the same point in space. Here the law of
contradiction is not violated. It simply finds a new dimension
by means of which incompatible judgments can refer to the
same objects, without proving destructive.

The so-called law of universality proves equally an abstrac-
tion. Once true always true could only hold in a timeless
universe or by abstracting from time. Experience shows
too clearly that neither facts nor meanings have absolute sta-
bility. All that our world seems to yield is such relative uni-
versality and uniformity as enables us to come in a fair way
toward agreement and to anticipate for practical ends the pro-
cesses of nature. Thus the relative and instrumental nature
of knowledge becomes evident.

What I have tried to show is that time does make a difference, \S
and that the difference it makes is that we must revise our
judgments or make new judgments in order to meet the re-
quirements of experience. If time made no difference, if ex- ^
perience could be described as well without it, then we should

268 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

have one eternal moment of reality with a timeless scale of
values. Once seeming true would be always seeming true in
such a world.

Time may, be spoken of as a non-being character. That does
not mean that lime is unreal. What time does is something
positive. It is responsible for passing away and novelty ; it
creeps into the intended reality and so makes necessary new
judgments. What I mean by placing it under the category of
non-being is, that it is not a thing or energy, though it makes
positive differences to the world of energy. Could we state
reality through and through in terms of quantitative determi-
nations, in terms of constancies and repetitions, we should have
no use for time. Our judgments as regards the factual char-
acter of the world, if once true, would not need to be revised.

Time bears a different relation to knowledge from that of the
stuff character of reality. The stuff contents of experience,
whether individuals, qualities, or relations, have a place within
experience ; they are particular and can be set off from other
contents, or pointed to. Blue is not only describable as dif-
ferent from other contents or like other contents, but can be
indicated as a particular blue fact as well. Not so with time.
Time is known only through its other. If we say fleeting or
passing we must think of fleeting values, not of fleeting time.
It is the instability of our facts and values that makes us sus-
, pect the presence of the time character. The evidence for it
is thus altogether indirect, i.e. in the difference it makes to
our meanings. To try to point to the time character, as we
point to blue or red, would be like the schoolmaster's saying :
" I see some boys that are not here."

Time knows no proximate genus under which it can be sub-
sumed. The only universe of discourse that can be framed for
it is reality or the process of experience as dichotomized, on the
one hand, into being, — the world of positive facts and values,
which can be held apart from their context, indicated or pointed
to as well as described in terms of their other, — and, on the
other hand, into the negation of being, the transmutation of
facts and values. In the process of experience being and time
are thus inseparably locked into one Hegelian, Kilkenny-cat
embrace. This ought to satisfy even the most voracious He-

THE NATURE OF TIME 269

gelian appetite for opposition. But there is nothing mystical
about the time character. To thus negate our meanings, to
make our judgments false and so to make new judgments neces-
sary is precisely its character. I have spoken of time as non-
being, not because I regard it as unreal, but because it negates
that which is. If we were to find a cold, logical equivalent for
the warm transitiveness of our immediate expei ience we should
be obliged to call it the non-identity-of-what-is character. That
is a very cumbersome adjective, but that is what it does.

Accounting for transmutation as due to the time character
may be regarded as a lazy way of getting rid of the responsi-
bility of describing the changes or sequences in our experience.
Not so. Transmutation in general does not account for any
particular transmutation. The fact that physics has assumed
motion as a universal property of bodies has not saved it from
the responsibility of investigating the laws of motion and de-
scribing the particular sequences. That time is a property of
reality simply means that facts are unstable; but how facts
shall be transmuted, the quality and rate of transmutation,
must be explained by their own structure and their place
within the system of facts. The concept of change in general
stands in the same relation to the particular changes that the
demand for law in general stands to the particular laws or
connections.

The time character must be defined as absolute negation in --
order to differentiate it from the negative judgment as ordi-
narily employed. The latter has reference to contrasting being
with being. The time character does not have to do with the
fact that there are coexisting differences or that we must now
make different judgments in regard to reality. Rather the
time character has to do with difference that creeps in at the
same point. It is a property of all concrete reality ; not only
an attribute of reflective experience, but of reality whether it
is reflective or a lower grade, even when, perhaps, in its own right
it cannot be characterized as experience. It makes such a
difference to reality for us that we must make different judg-
ments of what would otherwise be the same. By absolute,
therefore, is simply meant that time is a real property of our
experience-world, subjective and objective, and not a deriva-

270 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

tive of being in any form, as the Hegelians would have it. It
cannot be deduced by any a priori dialectic, but is forced upon
our will in trying to meet its world. It is irreducible as red
and sweet are irreducible qualities of experience; but, while
these are specific contents which can be marked off and indi-
cated, the time character is a generic adjective, a universal
attribute of reality. It is the seed of instability that must be
conceived, not to account for any particular motion, change,
or variation, but for motion or change at all. The particular
transmutations or changes must be accounted for by the char-
acter of the existing system of being, given this all-pervasive
property of time.

I have tried thus to give the concept of time a very specific
and technical meaning in our logic of experience. Not that I
have been arbitrary in this. On the contrary, I have tried to
unravel the character which time has in the common conscious-
ness of man, confused though that consciousness may be. It is
also the character which we need in order to make our descrip-
tion of experience consistent and complete. We can thus pro-
duce conceptual continuity and flow in the previously static
and discontinuous categories of our logic — thus make the wheels
of experience go round in thought as they do in fact. While
our logical system can in no wise be a substitute for the warm
and concrete process of experience, it ought to furnish a com-
plete symbolism for concrete experience.

I have two quarrels with idealistic theories so far. One is
that even though reality for us must be thought of as experi-
enced yet all experience is not reflective, and cannot therefore
be reduced to the conceptual type. Concepts, in relation to
a large part of experience, retain an instrumental or tool char-
acter. They are, with reference to non-reflective experience,
merely symbolic equivalents in the service of the willing, pur-
posive moment. But my other quarrel is that the ontological
conceptualists have failed to make their conceptual scheme ex-
haustive. Hegelian dialectic at best keeps jumping on one
leg in its attempt at a static scheme of reality. Its non-being
is not differentiated from being. But we need the negative
concept as well as the positive. The relativity of meanings is
as obvious a fact as that we have meanings. This relativity

THE NATURE OF TIME 271

of transmutation cannot be exhausted dialectically within the
implications of one eternal system, but is the character of
experience as ascertained a posteriori through the failure of
our meanings to express what they mean to express — the na-
ture of a changing reality. Not one system of meanings, but
ever new systems of meanings are required in our world. Thus
reality as concrete out-Hegels Hegel and makes ghosts out of
our logical absolutes.

I know this definition of time will seem abstract to my
intuitionalist friends; and they are right that we must not
mistake abstractions for realities. But without abstraction
and conceptual construction we should have no science or
philosophy. We should live simply in the immediate moment.
It is by the method of abstraction that we discover what differ-
ence facts make to each other within our world. Truth, or
conceptual analysis and construction, is the means through
which the concrete will strives after greater completeness of
insight and appreciation. It is this concrete and active self
which constructs the past and future to symbolize its own con-
ditions of activity as a time subject. It is this concrete self
which is conscious of direction, because it is conscious of pur-
pose ; to which the data and habits of the now are only a means
toward the realization of its demands for unity and wholeness ;
and for which, therefore, the death of the old meanings means
the birth of new meanings better expressive of its concrete life.
In this willing, purposive, changing ego, not in abstract sys-
tems of categories, lies the principle of negativity through which
experience is ever transcending the old meanings, and ever
reconstructing itself in terms of new meanings and systems.

There is a proper and improper use of the implicit. There
is one type of reality in which idealistic procedure from the
implicit to the explicit is at home, and that is in the case of pur-
posive wholes.1 We must take account of the various elements
or moments in a purposive whole as indicating the next step

1 For a lucid treatment of the implicit from the eternalist point of view, see
an article by Professor J. E. Creighton, "The Notion of the Implicit in Logic, "
Philosophical Review, Vol. 19, pp. 53-62. This deals with the subject from the
retrospective point of view of the cognitive moment, not from the point of view of
the creative process where each stage is individual, and must be recognized in
its own right with its own categories.

272 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

— the next note of the melody, the next act of the drama, the
next step in the argument. Wherever facts are parts of a
completed whole, they must be prospective; they must point
forward, even though they do not get then- definite meaning
until they are seen in their fulfillment. There is a timeless
identity in a purposive whole, and the meaning of the parts is
fixed by their already determined relationships. The novelty
here exists only from the point of view of the learning process.
There is no real novelty in Hamlet. It is different with the
creative process — the creation of Hamlet, the construction of
the argument, the organic growth process. Here there are
genuinely new steps. Here insight grows. A new individual
context is created. To think of the chicken as timelessly im-
plicit in the egg, which is somtimes true, is not a very palatable
idea. In a really edible egg, they are indeed part of one cre-
ative growth series, but they are different individuals, and
must be taken differently. We have nothing to do here with
a quantitative time whole. This cannot condition growth or
realization. We have to do with real time. It is with the
reality of change that time is bound up. In the case of pro-
cesses, which to all intents and purposes are reversible, or which
like a purposive construction can be viewed at once, time is
reducible to pure series, which simply means that you have
practical timelessness. Time is not here efficacious.

While it is through the difference which time makes to our
purposive striving that we come to know the character of time,
I cannot agree with Royce that time itself is "primarily the
form of will. And so a time sequence viewed as it really
is, that is, as a rational being really wills it to be, is viewed as
a sequence of novel and individual events, each expressing
somebody's present will to do something unique, and to find its
place in the world." 1 What about the tragedy of finding dif-
ference where our loyalty demands sameness? Moreover, our
willing of the new does not itself create it. The will at best
projects its present desire, its present intention, into the future.
For the novel, we must wait. This is the creative contribution
of the time process of which we are a part, and in regard to which
in the words of Hamlet, "the main thing is readiness." When

1 International Journal of Ethics, April, 1910, p. 262.

THE NATURE OF TIME 273

this new comes, it may affect our willing, as well as the object
willed.

I do not see how we can be said to will what we do not now
will or intend what we do not now intend. The new meaning,
however minutely we may analyze the conditions of its appear-
ance, must be looked at as a gift ; it is not taken simply out
of the whole cloth of the old. It cannot be predicted, there-
fore. It can be known only a posteriori. This new meaning
can no longer own the past except as it has been transmuted
and lives in the present meaning, as looked at from its point
of view. In it is the hope of the future which can only come
through the death of the present, "when we dead awaken."

There is one way in which the temporal pluralistic view has
the advantage over the static in its relation to the will and its
striving; and that is in regard to promise for the future. In
such a world mistakes are not irremediable. Errors can be
corrected, illusions can be set straight, evil can be overcome.
In a tuneless world the presence of wrong and perverse view-
points at all is a standing disease which cannot be remedied.
The timeless sin of Brahm in begetting Maya knows no logical
redemption at any rate; and the mystical solution is at best
a veiled way of denying the original premise and recognizing
the value of process. The temporalistic pluralist can take a
melioristic view of the world, however long and discouraging
may be the journey from brute to God.

To be sure this advantage has to be paid for, like every ad-
vantage in our finite world. In a temporal world there is no
guaranty that the future, at least so far as the finite individual
is concerned, may not be worse than the past. There is a
tragic element in the blindness and groping in such a world, which
the absolute world of the eternalist does not know. But this
temporal world seems to be our world, and so we have to make
the most of it. It is a world at least where the sincere, coura-
geous man can count — can help to create his own future.

Time and the Judging Process

We have seen that the character of time must be the difference
it makes to our judging process. It is evident, however, that
time does not pertain to the individual act of judgment. The

274 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

parts of the judgment are not separated in time, though it takes
time to speak the judgment. Each judgment is a timeless
synthesis, involving an ideal reference or interpretation, ab-
stracted from the time process. Let us examine somewhat
more in detail the relation of time to the process of judgment.

Without recognizing the reality of time, the judging process
itself would be impossible. The act of judgment presupposes
that certain aspects have been torn loose from reality; that
contents, more general and permanent than the rest, have been
discriminated, and abstracted in the process of experience, and
have become symbolic of other contents. In a static world,
where being lies next to being in one glassy stare, distinctions
between thought and reality could never arise. Meaning and
object would be inseparably agglutinated, if, indeed, you could
assume meanings at all in a world where conduct has no pro-
spective significance. Judgments are progressive adjustments,
which are possible only in a world where the individual is de-
pendent for the satisfaction of his nature upon centers of reality
beyond his own, and where, through a process of interaction,
supposition and verification, the fittest adjustments survive,
and make it possible for him to meet, at least approximately,
the demands of the other centers upon him. Judgments, there-
fore, both as regards their genesis, and as regards the testing
of their validity, presuppose process and plurality as involved
in the constitution of reality. The possibility of judgments
at all presupposes negation, not negativity in general as an ab-
stract logical category, as Bosanquet has it, but real, dynamic
negation — transmutation as opposed to static positions within
a system.

Suppose, in the first place, that we start with our system of
truth meanings. To be sure, this is an inverting of real pro-
cedure, for such a system of relations is a way which the pur-
posive time stream of tendency has of objectifying itself, of
making clear its trend. But by starting with the truth system,
we can the more easily discover its relativity, and so find the
neglected element. Now, in thus positing the system of truth
relations, we come up against the fact that they are often un-
stable ; that while we intend that our meanings and values
shall be eternal ; while we try to freeze reality into a static mold,

THE NATURE OF TIME 275

it will not stay. It melts. Time creeps into our system, and
we must revise — perpetually revise — our concrete meanings.
The rationale of this instability, whether subjective or objective,
must be found in the nature of the real world. But it can only
be made part of our system of truth a posteriori, as it falsifies
our meanings, eternal though they intend to be.

Secondly, many judgments or concepts, we have seen, can
become intelligible as regards their own specific significance,
only if we presuppose such an attribute of real non-being. Such
concepts or attitudes as past and future are not exhausted in
our ideal spreading out of our memories and expectancies. In
a static world, memory and expectancy would be alike mean-
ingless. In human experience, at least, there is real vanishing
of contents, and real novelty. Contents come into, and slip
out from our attention field. There is a transmuting, at least
of our context of significance, whether the real objects change
or not. And this negation is part of reality. Not only is this
true of the concepts which in a special way are bound up with
the time character, but in the case of other fundamental con-
cepts also the reality of process, with its implied negation and
novelty, is presupposed. Thus physical continuity becomes
unintelligible apart from process, apart from the fusing of one
positive characteristic or position into another, as for example
in the motion of the point in drawing a line. Positions must
be looked upon as abstractions from a continuous process.
Even geometrical space, the type of the coexistent and the eter-
nal, at least in so far as it presupposes continuity, implies mo-
tion and hence implies time. Number presupposes cumulative
process for its significance. The number consciousness would •''
be impossible in a static world. It requires the transmutation V
of our meanings, as well as retentiveness, to make counting
possible. The formula, n + 1, cannot express the individual
significance of the cumulative steps of number. The zero of
subtraction in mathematics, as in x — y = 0, presupposes at
least ideal destruction of possibilities ; and so serves to sym-
bolize the destruction of real alternatives in the choices of the
volitional process. The concept of the infinite, again, would
be impossible except for a thought activity which can abstract
from its limitations and thus conceive itself, in obedience to a

276 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

certain law or purpose, as creative of new steps, " world without
end."

Thirdly, the incompatibility of our judgments and attitudes
which claim to be of the same object and by the same subject ;
which concern reality at the same point in space and in the same
respect, makes it necessary to suppose that reality at the same
point is unstable, has a history ; that our judgments vary, be-
cause they are made concerning a different reality, or by a dif-
ferent subject; that, in other words, we have different strata
of transformations of being, at the same point, necessitating
different judgments. Whether these transformations are in
the real subject or in the real object, does not matter. Either
or both may be the case. In either case new judgments of
reality are necessitated; and we must find a way of making
our judgments consistent, by assuming a new attribute of reality
beside that of stuff.

Some judgments at any rate are relative though they claim
to be true. This relativity, moreover, does not pertain to their
function within their own context. We are taking for granted
that they successfully lead to the object which they intend
then and there. We will suppose at any rate that the Gauls
are such and live in such places and in such social relations as
Ca3sar tells us. Why, then, should his description fail to fit
the France of to-day? Why should not once true be always
true? How can there be legitimately conflicting truths?
We must account for the discrepancy of judgments, made with
reference to the same point in space and in the same respect,
without contradiction. We can have different judgments
coexisting in regard to different points or different aspects;
but how can we have different judgments on top of each other,
as it were, and claiming the same point? This can only be
because of a certain inherent principle of diversity or non-iden-
tity in the point so that there is transmutation of its being;
or because a different subject is making judgments of the same
identical point. We must introduce a non-spatial, non-stuff
attribute, a pure dynamic principle, which shall necessitate in-
compatible judgments with regard to reality. Whether the
difference is regarded primarily as creeping into the real object,
or into the real subject, in either case, it means ultimately

THE NATURE OF TIME 277

incompatible attitudes toward reality. All change resolves
itself for knowledge into a change of point of view or new
experience.

We can define, then, the relation of time to judgment : Tune
is that attribute of the real subject-object, which makes in-
compatible judgments (i.e. different judgments as regards the
same aspect of reality at the same point) necessary.

This time character of reality appears nowhere more clearly
than in our quantitative judgments of the time process. "Let
us imagine a transcendental being, built upon the principles of
the eternalist conception of reality, paying a visit to our em-
pirical world and catching sight of a timepiece : ' Hello there/
he says, 'what is that?' On being told that this is an instru-
ment to measure time with, he asks : ' Well, how much time is
it?' He is told that it is one hour and thirty minutes. 'All
right,' he says, 'one hour and thirty minutes.' 'No,' the ter-
restrial being says, 'it is now one hour and thirty minutes and
thirty seconds.' In blank astonishment our visitor replies :
'You say it is one hour and thirty minutes, and you say it is
one hour and thirty minutes and thirty seconds, which do you
want me to believe?' 'No,' the terrestrial says, 'it is one hour
and thirty-one minutes.' 'You are an incorrigible liar,' says
the visitor. 'No,' says the terrestrial, 'look for yourself.' It is
just one hour and thirty-two minutes.' By this time the
language of the transcendental visitor is not such as ought to
be heard by mortal man, and so we must close the interview." l

Such is the nature of time that no measurement of time can
be absolute. For given any quantitative description of the
flowing process in terms of hour, minute, and second, and the
statement must be continually revised. If you make time a
quantitative series, you must introduce a second series to meas-
ure the time of the measuring process, which itself is a time
process. But in this way, your time concept would always
leak. You would have to refer to another standard ad infinitum ;
you would never reach time. The judgments of time become
infinite. An infinite number of serial perspectives are required,
which merely means that time itself is not a series, but lies in
another dimension from the world of description, yet condi-

1 Quoted from "Time and Reality," pp. 23 and 24.

278 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

tions that world and furnishes the rationale of our attempts
at serial construction. The reality of time is thus forced upon
us by this instability of the universe, including the universe
of truth. Change could not be produced, as modern science
seems to imply, by the mere juxtaposition of static entities or
substances. We need a negative property, as well as positive
properties, to make change possible. We depend indeed upon
the nature processes to do the work, we can merely arrange the
conditions. But we must not suppose that the abstract con-
ditions, which, taken alone, would remain eternal fixtures,
exhaust the nature of process.

The question might still arise whether this conception of
non-being should be called by the name of time, or whether
that does not more properly belong to the Kantian concep-
tion. To this, I would answer that the above conception is
implied as the fundamental aspect of time, both by common
experience and science. By time, the unsophisticated at least
do not mean merely the measure of time or the chronological
series, but passing units or a moving series. And the passing
or moving is more fundamental to the conception than the
units or the series. Should the procession of years stop, we
all recognize that time would be no more. When we speak of
time, it is that time flies ; time is on the wing ; time slips away ;
time passes; time steals upon us; time creeps in, etc. The
time concept cannot be exhausted in our static, timeless chrono-
logical picture. We must rather recognize this picture as
conventional. We must identify time with the going on of
process, instead of with the conventional measure of process
— as " sticking in being " and making it unstable. Common
experience is here saner than Aristotle and Kant.

There is no other way of defining time which is not circular.
You cannot define time and leave time out. Define time as
the number of motion, or the measure of time, as is done by
Plato and Augustine (who conceive time to originate with the
solar system), and you have the circle of using as definition a
concept already involving time, for motion requires both time
and space, beside mass for its definition. And there is no mea-
sure of motion, including the earth-clock, which is not relative
to time. Identify time, again, with the order series of number,

THE NATURE OF TIME 279

and, beside producing confusion of names, you find that num-
ber as successive acts, with cumulative meaning and novelty,
already implies the time concept. The same will be true of
any definition which treats of time as relative.

Time, however, is not change, but the condition of change. ^
It is not necessary to suppose that time itself changes, though
it makes our values unstable, creeps into our equations. The
chains of necessity will not hold reality within the mechanical
construction of our three dimensional geometrical space.
Facts slip away, and creep in, which require another dimension.

Having once defined the real time character, we can easily
account for the serial aspect of experience as expressed in the
psychological series of past, present, and future. These do not,
by their sum, constitute time. They are derivatives, on the
contrary, ideal constructions or will-attitudes, necessitated
by the relation of the time character of experience to the struc-
ture character, and remain to the end relative. The past is
the attitude toward the content which time has negated and
transformed, and which therefore can no longer as such be
acted upon ; the present is the sense of real activity, or the going
on of process; the future is the expectancy, the prospective
attitude toward the coming or new content, the field of real
possibility. The irreversibility of the concrete past, on our
theory, is not ideal merely, but is due to the real negating and
transforming of the world of experience for which the present
symbols stand.

While the irreversible character of process has generally been
conceded, it has not always been made clear in what sense
process is irreversible. It is clear that the nature of the process
must be taken into account in order to define its irreversibility.
The more complexly organized a process is, the more essentially
irreversible it will be found to be. Thus simple processes, such
as are found in the inorganic world, are practically reversible,
so far as our crude averages are concerned. Indeed, reversi-
bility is a postulate of the physical sciences. There is, however,
a limitation even here, in that available energy is in part dissi-
pated in every activity. There are difficulties, too, in the limi-
tation of our control as in mending the broken china. When
we deal with organic processes, irreversibility seems more of

280 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

the real nature of the process. We cannot, with the means
in our control, reverse the process from childhood to old age,
and so death in multicellular structures at any rate remains
for us an inevitable fact. In our social relations, there are
various degrees of irreversibility. We may injure our friend,
make restitution, and be forgiven. It is not true in such a
case that the past is irrevocable in the sense that it cannot be
altered. Not only can it be changed, but the result may even
be heightened in value because of the correction of past errors,
and the atonement for past mistakes. Mary Magdalene may
be more of a saint for having been purified from seven devils.
But whether the past is transformed for better or worse, his-
tory cannot be the same as though the past had not been. The
past, moreover, may be in large part beyond repair, owing to
our changing finite conditions. The friend we injured may
be dead when we awake to repentance; and while a merciful
humanity and a merciful God may give us another chance, as
we feel that the latter will do, the objective injury so far as our
limited view point goes, is irreparable. In any case, while the
past is ever transformed in the course of the process — im-
proved or deteriorated by being taken up into the context of
the ongoing stream — the deed cannot be undone in the sense
that it does not count. It conditions for better or worse the
character of the transformation with its creative uniqueness.
The advantage of the temporal view of the world is that it does
not make us slaves of the past. New beginnings can be made.
Melioration is possible. Not only can the future be better
than the past, but the past itself may come to have new sig-
nificance and value for being taken up into a more compre-
hensive future.

Our universe may be conceived as floating in time, as it does
in space. But the character of time as opposed to space is to
make a difference to contents. What difference it makes
depends upon the organization of the contents. As there are
relations which are extra-spatial, so there may be relations that
are extra-temporal. It is not necessary to the belief in the
reality of time to prove that all facts or relations must be
subject to time. But admit time at all, in the smallest way,
and it is impossible to reduce it to a function of a static system.

THE NATURE OF TIME 281

There may be truths or relations to which time is irrelevant.
As there are certain relations, such as number relations, which
are independent of space, so there may be certain formal re-
lations which are independent of time. Time may be irrelevant
to the formal relation, 2 + 2 = 4, once the relation is dis-
covered, however much it is implied in the genesis of our judg-
ment. Whether any truths are actually thus timeless is a
matter for experience to show and cannot be proved a
priori. Even the law of contradiction is hypothetical, de-
pendent upon the permanency of our mental constitution,
though, of course, we cannot conceive, a universe, without
presupposing it.

Does the flow of the total time process have a definite form
quality? Is it spiral or some other form? We cannot say by
empirical induction. We can deal only with our piecemeal
finite experience. History seems to indicate a sort of spiral
periodicity of human experience; but even here the data are
far too complex, and the span at our disposal too brief to make
any definite generalization possible. Several independent
variables must be taken account of in race evolution. We have
no longer Hegel's confidence in the a priori construction of
history. Some overlapping there is, some cumulation of mean-
ing. Else history were in vain. But there does not seem to be
a continuous process of development, as in the drama. New
motives, whether due to race differences, to different traditional
backgrounds, or to profound variations brought in by in-
dividual genius, serve to give history a new direction, and make
it difficult to find a standard of comparison. Whether Greek
or Gothic architecture is superior cannot be decided by any
conventional measuring rod. Each is uniquely satisfying
within its own temperamental and psychological setting.
While in the case of our practical ideals, we would seem to be
on surer ground, we must remember that here, too, the scale of
values varies all the way from self-assertiveness to self-renun-
ciation ; and we can by no means be sure that our passion for
doing things is superior to the peace which passeth under-
standing. Without any dogmatic theory about progress, it
behooves us to profit by the past, and, so far as we are able,
to enter into sympathetic communion with it.

282 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

Finally, it would be neither desirable nor possible to dis-
sociate time completely from its secondary or phenomenal char-
acter, the chronological series. Language has once for all
included this, just as we speak of the setting sun even after
the Copernican theory. The conventional aspect of tune has
its convenience and relative truth, too.

CHAPTER XV

TlME AND THE PROBLEMATIC1

IN trying to meet the problems of life and conduct, we have
found that we cannot deal with reality merely on the basis
of our three dimensional spatial scheme of relations. We
have meanings, somehow, which, while once truthful, cease to
apply to the world as we find it. How shall we locate these
perspectives of value which, though true in their own setting,
no longer fit the perceptual world? ,

One thing is certain, we cannot take time as serial and still
meet the demands of experience. We cannot conceive of time
as serial without making both truth and reality impossible.
Make time serial in character and you have this dilemma :

1. If you assume your time series to be real, then you have
the coexistence of an indefinite number of real, exclusive mo-
ments claiming the same space, for each moment of time claims
the whole of concrete perception with its dimensions. But
reality cannot be both one and many in the same respect, hence
reality becomes impossible.

2. But if the time series is regarded as ideal, then we have
an indefinite number of descriptions or judgments, each ex-
clusive of the other, and each referring to the same reality at the
same point. Hence our descriptions or judgments claiming
to be diverse, and yet of one reality, hi the same respect, are
contradictory, and truth becomes impossible.

The only possible solution, as we have already indicated, is
to regard time as non-serial or prior to series, and to regard
series as a derivative construction. Time must, somehow, be
involved as a property of the real, conditioning the whole world
of subjective construction.

If we take an historical illustration, the contradiction that
confronts us is that we have many systems of ideas pretending

1 In this chapter I have drawn freely from " Time and Reality," Chapter V.

283

284 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

to express the same fact. If we take Rome as our fact, we
have many Rome systems which all assert their reality. Thus
we have the Rome of Victor Emmanuel and the system of re-
lations clustering about it. We have also the Rome of the
Napoleonic era, the Rome sacked by the Vandals, the Rome
where Caesar was assassinated, the Rome of the Gracchi, etc.
The peculiar thing about every one of these systems is that
they all equally assert their own reality, every one is complete
and exclusive of the others. Actually, however, the Rome of
Victor Emmanuel is the only one that in 1916 A.D. corresponds
to the perceptual content Rome, or can interact with the real
moment of living interest ; and so the others are excluded from
existence. Furthermore, the present system of relations is
complete, entirely apart from the other systems. The latter
have nothing to do with international relations. They cannot
be reached by gunpowder. They are, therefore, anomalies.
They assert their reality, however; unlike the mermaids and
centaurs they are entirely in agreement with the scientific
canons of possibility ; they really refer to the perceptual con-
tent, Rome, but fail to fit it. They all say, we are Rome, but
only one system seems to be able to command present belief.

But the earlier systems which fail of perceptual verification
in the now are the products of the same activity and the same
tests as the system which now is valid. If there is no way of
making the earlier systems consistent with the present, we must
not only declare them false, but we must doubt the possibility
of ideal systematization, that is, of truth, at all. We must,
therefore, find some means of harmonizing our conflicting or
duplicate ideal systems, if truth is to be possible ; and if truth
is not possible, then we must stop philosophizing. We cannot
fall back on the absolute for truth. Truth means ideal har-
mony for us. Ideas do not transcend themselves; they are
our leadings and must be harmonized within our experience.
Nor can we fall back on immediate experience when thought
fails. We cannot say that we have intuition, which is not
present intuition, and so intuition of pastness or futurity ; the
contexts which symbolize the past must be intuited as figuring
in our present experience. What shall we do then with the
superfluous systems which have no real relations with the now ?

TIME AND THE PROBLEMATIC 285

It is evident that we must introduce a new factor to get over
the contradiction.

What we actually do in our scheme of history is to arrange
these systems with reference to the perceptual present and af-
firm them all true except for time. The systems are arranged
teleologically, as nearly as we can, in an ideal series, time ac-
counting for the conflicting reality claims. To know what the
historic past and future are, becomes then easy, because we
see that they are our constructions to account for experience,
and that they have no reality except for our positing them
as such explanations. As such, however, they point to some
fundamental property, which must explain the present dis-
crepancy.

Take, again, the case of motion — of Zeno's arrow. The
discrepancy is the same as before. We have, once more, a
number of systems of relations which all pretend to mean or
express the nature of the same fact. These systems are all
exclusive of each other. At any one point in space, and at
any one moment in time, the system of relations of the arrow
is complete ; we have at that point and moment a whole uni-
verse, a perfect quantitative system of relations. At another
point we have an equally complete, but a different system to
express the same fact — the flight of the arrow. We have,
therefore, in so far as the movement of the arrow furnishes
us a line which is infinitely divisible, an infinite number of pos-
sible points and an infinite number of possible systems, all
defining or pretending to define the same arrow. Furthermore,
these universes coexist ideally, and all claim to be real ; none,
however, really expresses the flight of the arrow. The ideal
systems, in so far as they pretend to express the meaning of the
movement, are not only all contradictory, but all false, pro-
vided we cannot reconcile them in a new dimension. This is
made possible by introducing time, a fact which does not as
such appear in any system, but accounts for the possibility of
the ideal coexistence of these systems. It is just this impos-
sibility of getting along without time which has led some scien-
tists, as Lagrange, to introduce it as a fourth dimension, though
time itself is not a dimension of relations, but rather the rationale
of a unique non-spatial dimension.

286 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

A New Dimension

0

The past is su<4i an ideal dimension. Our serial construction
of chronology ei ists nowhere except in our way of treating the
facts. This is equally true of the spatial scheme of dimen-
sions. The Cartesian coordinates exist only as our conceptual
tools. Dimensions are ways in which we find it convenient to
symbolize relations. In each case, however, there is a factual
basis for our ideal construction. We no more make the char-
acter of the past, than we make our perceptual world in space,
by taking account of it in terms of our purposes. In each case,
we find it convenient to spread out our facts in a certain order
in our attempt to orient ourselves to our world. We can make
our world consistent and practically intelligible only by spread-
ing out the past in a dimension of its own, independent of the
world of space perception. While we may utilize spatial meta-
phors, such as the line, in symbolizing the past, it is based upon
another set of values from space dimensions — values of suc-
cession and becoming, instead of coexistence and constancy.
The dimension of the past is as much necessitated by the de-
mands of experience as are the spatial dimensions of the present.
In each case social agreement has abstracted from what is per-
sonal and unique in our individual perspectives and emphasized
those features which are relevant to common understanding
and action.

There are two things of which we must take account in order
to understand the nature of the past. In the first place, the
past has a non-being aspect, without which it could not mean
past at all. The past world exists no longer as perceptual;
it exists only as it has been taken up in the ongoing move-
ment of history. The Greeks are no longer besieging Troy,
Caesar is no longer crossing the Rubicon, though those experi-
ences are continuous in history with events and civilizations
now real. The question arises, however, if the past world is
a world of non-being as contrasted with present perception,
why should we have even the ideal construction of such a world ?
How can we mean or refer to such a world at all ?

This leads us to the second aspect. The reason that we can
construct the past at all is that it involves, besides this quali-

TIME AND THE PROBLEMATIC 287

fication of non-being, contexts of content wjthin the present
that give us a basis for our past construction. The past is not
a mere fiction. It is not for us to make hist >ry as we please.
While the past has no independent existence c t its own, it has
a factual basis within the present which we can'iot ignore. We
reconstruct the past from present records. Perhaps I can make
this clearer by an analogy. If we examine the geological strata,
we find the basis within them of a certain series. There are,
indeed, no past layers. All the strata are present strata;
all the characteristics are now characteristics. Should the
mountain become conscious of itself, however, it could con-
struct a series of conditions, no longer existing, to account for its
present character. A better illustration would be a tree. A
tree has various layers or rings that enable us to tell something
about the history of it. Suppose the tree should become self-
conscious, it could construct a series of conditions to account
for its present state ; and, if it did construct such a series
at all, it would have to construct it in a certain way, owing to
its present character. Yet there are no past layers or rings.
There is only the present tree as an organic unity, suffused with
present sap, though the old layers retain a certain individuality
of their own in the present structure.

So our reflective moment discovers within itself certain
characteristics, certain survivals in the way of memory, as
within the individual organism, or of records which are the
survivals within the larger social processes. These make it
possible to construct an order or series of attitudes, constituting
history. The feeling of duration itself is a present feeling,
however much it may help us in giving significance to the
ideal construction of a past-series. If we choose to construct
such a series, however, the present character of reality makes
it necessary to recognize a certain kind of order, which has a
real or factual basis within the present. Each successive mo-
ment in the series must be such as to supplant, to occupy the
space of, and to exclude the reality of each preceding moment.

Moreover, such a construction is necessary in order to make
the present reflective moment intelligible at all. If the birth
and the funeral and all the intervening stages were thrown to-
gether in one promiscuous mass, experience would be a hope-

288 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

less chaos. The individual attitudes or meanings, with' which
history deals, are exclusive of each other, each claims the whole
universe for its own. fills the whole of space with its three
dimensions. The point of view of the Homeric world, with its
gods and heroes ; the point of view of the age of Pericles with
its art and its philosophy ; the world of Caesar with its conquests
and its political ideals, each fills the universe with its presence,
and does not recognize the reality of the other. In such a
babel of tongues, a timeless view of the world would simply
have to commit suicide by abandoning the law of contradiction
altogether.

The confusion can be resolved, if we regard experience as
making itself anew, if we regard the universe as essentially cre-
ative, at least in spots. To some extent, it accumulates past
experience into present structure, as well as transforms present
structure into new experience. Each moment of experience
brings its sense of order with it, spreads its content out into
its spatial and other ideal series. There is no inconsistency
any longer in each point of view claiming the whole universe.
Each individual meaning claims its universe. When the old
meaning and its universe are taken account of by a new point
of view in a new universe, the old point of view, in so far as it
was valid, and the old universe which it meant, still are seen to
fit each other, and no attempt is made to rob the old meaning
of its universe.

Thus the present real self, " the heir of all the ages," finds
it convenient to look upon itself as one out of a series of universes,
which have been retransmuted and superseded, in order to un-
derstand its own constitution and define its own expectancies.
This is true not only in regard to the spreading out of the past
will-attitudes into history proper. The self also finds it con-
venient to spread out the world below the level of experience
into an evolutionary series in order better to understand the
present forms of being and their characteristics ; and thus we
have theories of biological and geological evolution and nebular
hypotheses. Here we translate that which knows no internal
meaning into meaning and history for our own convenience,
on the basis of certain structural characteristics, as they exist
for us.

TIME AND THE PROBLEMATIC 289

Knowledge of the Present and the Past Contrasted

The present is the field of scientific observation and practical
attitudes. Science deals with a now constitution of reality,
on the basis of which we can link our facts and anticipate the
behavior of things. To obtain such uniformities, science neces-
sarily abstracts from the individual aspect of things, and se-
lects out of reality the constant qualities and attitudes, con-
venient but only part of reality. Ethics, on the other hand,
aims to deal with reality as concrete and individual. It deals
with the adjustment of individuals to each other in social life,
in which alone they can realize their needs.

There is a peculiar quality about the real relationships to
the present social context of experience, which the symbolic
past lacks — that of living response or reciprocity. We must
recognize the other personal contexts, not merely as having
their own meaning, but as capable of sympathetic participation
with us. This has been strikingly brought out by Plato in the
"Phaedrus," where he discusses the advantages of living com-
munication over written records. "Writing," Socrates is made
to say, "is unfortunately like painting; for the creations of
the painter have the attitude of life, and yet, if you ask them
a question, they preserve a solemn silence. And the same may
be said of speeches. You would imagine that they had intel-
ligence, but if you want to know anything and put a question
to one of them, the speaker always gives one unvarying answer.
And when they have once been written down, they are tossed
about anywhere among those who do and among those who
do not understand them. And they have no reticences or
proprieties toward different classes of persons ; and, if they are
unjustly assailed or abused, their parent is needed to protect
his offspring, for they cannot protect themselves."

What is lacking, then, in these past minds, incarnated into
the spiritual body of language or looking at us through the
marble or painting? A meaning of their own they evidently
possess, which we must respect and appreciate. They express
definite attitudes. They have a purpose of their own. They
are the soul in an individual act, the stereotyped expression of
an individual insight, made eternal by being isolated from the

290 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

stream of personal history. But while taken out of their per-
sonal history, they continue to figure as purposes and energies
within social history. As part of the history of the social mind
of a people, of a race or of humanity they continue to grow,
to spread, to energize the life of the race. They retain their
individuality within the great and ever-moving social consti-
tution. What they have lost by being thus socialized and
given an artificial body is their individual feeling of value.
They are incapable of individual sympathy with our flesh-
enveloped minds.

The dialectic of the past, in other words, is a one-sided
affair. The living speaker develops his meaning of the past to
his own satisfaction, and that is all that can be asked. Future
moments may find the present meaning partial and unsatis-
factory, but the real past itself makes no emotional response,
says neither yes nor no, offers neither resistance nor encourage-
ment. It is plastic, so far as value is concerned, in the hands
of the present moment, a means to a present end, and yet does
not complain, does not stand up for its own integrity, though
such integrity it must have to figure as a present object of knowl-
edge.

Not so with the individual moments, in the present social
continuum of experience. Here you have a two-sided dialectic,
a yes and no relation. Misconstrue the other mind and you
fail of cooperation, fail to realize your purposes. The other
reflective consciousness not only has a meaning, but insists
that he means what he means, refuses to be the mere instru-
ment to your end. If you would share his life and realize your
own larger life, you must revise your meaning of his meaning
so as to approximate more closely to the latter. You must
respect his own sense of value. The more comprehensive and
sympathetic your meaning, the greater your opportunities
for life. Would you construe him simply in your own way,
treat him as a mere thing, then you run up against it, you are
slapped in the face, sometimes literally ; whether you are suc-
cessful or unsuccessful in this external dogmatism, you forfeit
your chances for a larger life, you fail in the struggle. The
only way you can succeed is by an acknowledgment of the
demands which the other consciousness makes upon you.

TIME AND THE PROBLEMATIC 291

• Thus in the relationship of individuals within the present
social continuum, conscious agreements become necessary.
Each individual, to realize his demands, must learn to recognize
the demands which are made upon him by other individuals.
Only as there is a mutual recognition of such demands, do social
institutions become possible. What beings we are forced to
acknowledge as individuals, and the character of these indi-
viduals for us — this depends upon the demands to which we
must adjust ourselves, which we must recognize in order to
realize our purposes; and the adequacy of the realization of
our purposes will depend upon the adequacy of our recognition
of these demands. The closer the approximation of our mean-
ing to the living purposes of other beings, the better we shall
succeed in anticipating their behavior and in adjusting ourselves
to our world. In the case of the infra-reflective nature pro-
cesses, no acknowledgment of external meaning or value is
necessary. To use these processes, therefore, as mere means
calls for no protest, and the test of truth on this level is simply
the success of such manipulation.

That there are different individuals, however, can never be
proved a priori. A priori the ego never could get away from
itself. It would simply have to create its own non-ego out-
right, and this would be no non-ego at all. A non-ego, which
should exist simply as an act of our positing, would indeed be
beautifully transparent and controllable, but it would be ab-
solutely barren too, as far as satisfying any needs. It is only
a posteriori, through sympathetic relations, or through our
failure of adjustment, that we have come to recognize other
individuals at all. It is through the a posteriori process of ideal
construction and trial that we have learned to meet the non-
ego in a more adequate way.

At best, our knowledge of other individual minds is a matter
of approximation. We can only partially hope to get the real
significance of a meaning beyond our own. Communication
and conceptual definition are concerned with whether we aim at
the same objects in each other's experience. It has to do with
the generic features of our meanings, not with identity of fringe
as regards such objects. Functional identity is all that is
necessary for practical relations. The important thing is not

292 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

whether our meanings are the same, but whether they terminate
in similar behavior. If so, our meanings may be taken as
equivalent.

Absolute sameness of meaning, at any one time, would mean
absolute sameness of mental contexts or mere identity. If
there are individual meanings at all, this will be impossible.
And we must behave, at any rate, as if there were different in-
dividuals. The greater the sameness of conditions, however,
the greater the sameness of meaning. Twins, it has been shown,
manifest a great deal of likeness as regards tastes and prefer-
ences. But however closely alike the organic conditions may
be, there is a difference in subjective conditions, difference in
emphasis, difference in initiative and choices, difference in social
setting.

The greater the disparity in conditions and meaning, the
more difficult becomes the problem of agreement or common
understanding even in the crudest ways. How difficult it is
for us to interpret the child mind and to sympathize with its
aims. We treat it just like a little grown person. How little
sympathy we show with savage races and how little, if any,
significance we attribute to their lives as shown in our treatment
of them. Still more problematic becomes our knowledge in
regard to animal consciousness. We are apt either to deny to
the higher animals any significant life, or else to attribute
to them our own consciousness. In the lowest organisms and
in the inorganic realm, knowledge becomes a mere demand for
external continuity and use, as far as we are concerned.

Even in the living present, then, and where the conditions
are most favorable, our knowledge is decidedly problematic.
The value of our knowledge, even on the highest level of de-
velopment, must be estimated from the point of view of con-
venience for action and appreciation, rather than with reference
to exhaustiveness.

In the meantime, since reality is individual, and because it
is individual is dynamic, there is an element of non-being in our
knowledge. Our ideal construction gives a value of its own to
reality beyond. And as the reality beyond is ever changing,
the prospect of exhausting the surd and reducing the universe
to the dead level of sameness is at most a dream of those phi-

TIME AND THE PROBLEMATIC 293

losophers, in whom the passion for identity overmasters every
other passion. Only in a world of abstract averages could such
a permanent instinctive adjustment, as Spencer dreams of, be
possible, surely not in a world of unstable individual equilibri-
ums, with the possibility always of new insight as well as the
possibility of going wrong. Each creative act, whether new
purpose or sin, changes the total complexion of the universe
and involves a fresh readjustment. In a world like ours, there-
fore, there will always be coexistent many experience moments
with their different perspectives of history and nature, each
with its scale of values. Sameness for us is, at best, a category
of conceptual abstraction, to be used in so far as it may be
convenient. Better live in a problematic and contingent world,
however, with something to do and something to attain, than to
suffer from the langeweile and dull monotony of a world where
nothing happens.

The difficulty with the past, as we have seen, is that it makes
no living response. We are dealing there with attitudes no
longer actively real. As to the past attitudes themselves, we
must rely on records, but the records are merely symbolic of
past points of view. The thought universe, within which
they lived, is at most only a partial world to us, a stage in the
evolution of our own experience, while to them it was the whole
world. The mythological world, for Example, which was
reality itself to our ancestors, is a mere shadow world to us, at
best preparatory for better things. It was a belief world to
them, it is mere fancy to us. We do not get the past attitudes
or meanings as such, we get them only as transmuted and
appropriated into the historic movements that have succeeded
them. That is their significance for us. How plastic history
is, is evident from the difference in emphasis and interpretation
from age to age. Each age uses history for its own ends, re-
constructs the past for the sake of its own purposes, and in
obedience to its own needs. The more complex the point of
view grows, the more hopeless is any realization of the real
meaning of the primitive attitudes.

Sometimes there has been an attempt to regard the past
as resolvable into mere degrees of complexity with reference
to the present. This, as an artificial device, may, for certain

294 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

purposes, be justifiable. It is convenient sometimes to regard
the mind of the savage and the baby as our own mind sim-
plified. Such meaning as we get out of the universe must
naturally, as shown before, involve such a translation into
terms of ourselves. But the savage and the child are not mere
complications of content. They are wills, in their own right,
with their own unique value. Here lies the difficulty of un-
derstanding them. Were they mere things, no such difficulty
would exist. We could read their qualities in terms of other
qualities, we could take them as mere instances of their kind.
If you understand one piece of gold, you understand all pieces
of gold. When it comes to wills, each will must be understood
and appreciated as such, even though this can be done only
in terms of our own experience.

However different may be the practical relations of sympathy
and interaction as between the past and the present, the method
of knowing the past does not differ from that of understanding
the present. In either case, the procedure must be pragmatic
— the trying out of our hypotheses or attitudes in individual and
social experience. In either case, the difficulty lies in the unique-
ness of the volitional context. The fact that the two wills
exist ages apart does not itself alter the problem. I can more
easily understand Plato and Aristotle than the children that
play in the yard. In any case, we must draw upon our own
experience ; and in the case of the child, we must draw upon our
memory so far as we can ; we must strive to make real the past
will of our own early life.

History must be regarded, then, as our ideal construction on
the basis of past contexts of will as they survive in records. Its
justification is a practical one. In appropriating the institu-
tional or accumulated life of the race, we come to consciousness
of ourselves, we come to understand our world, and to anticipate
better its behavior, though the music and the discord of the
past have been merged into the movement of the present.
History, therefore, has a practical aim. We can act more in-
telligently in the present by taking account of the contexts of
the past. The past dimension is convenient for spreading
out certain present strata and observing their tendency for us.
In order to have history at all, human, biological, or geological,

TIME AND THE PROBLEMATIC 295

we must abstract and simplify as best we can within our com-
plex present ; we must try to understand the motives of past
human history in the light of our own present tendencies;
we must breathe into the symbolic structures of the dead past
such soul as seems to be called for by their greater simplicity
or complexity. But we must not be deceived into mistaking
our constructions for reality. These past symbolic structures,
once at any rate, had a soul of their own. In the case of our
own childhood points of view, moreover, while they are no
longer real beliefs, we at least own them as once ours, and can
contrast them with our present point of view as fading memory
structures.

While we cannot make the contents of the past, the value
of the past varies with the purposes of the living present. Hence
the history of the past is never closed. For history, whether
political or philosophical or scientific, is a process of evaluation,
and the value of the past must ever vary with the changing
purposes of humanity. What seem real values in one period
of history, may seem illusions in another period. The intoxi-
cation of military pageant seems as barbarous to a scientific
and industrial epoch as does the display of human scalps.
Thus, entirely apart from the discovery of new facts, we see how
the perspective of history assumes ever new values. It takes
its coloring, chameleon like, from the context in which it is seen.
The original values are difficult to reproduce at best as they
are colored for us by the present background.

It is not always that the past values appear to us as illusions.
Sometimes, indeed, they seem prophetic of the present. The
past attitudes furnish the leading, so it seems, which terminates
in the present. Here, too, we must be on our guard in reading
our values into the past attitudes. Each age and sect claims
the true Christianity, each national party claims to continue the
true policies of Washington and Lincoln. While the real
leading cannot here be over-estimated, we must none the less
realize that we are looking at the past through the eyes of our
age, and only in the long run, if at all, can the fairness of our
interpretation be wholly proved. In the meantime, we must
be modest and open-minded.

By virtue of individual creativeness, and the complexity of

296 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

historic currents, with their unequal pace of development, the
past values may appear not only as prophecies of the present ;
they may appear as standards of the present. Thus in art and
philosophy we still look back to the Greeks as masters ; and in
ethics we find our ideal outlined by the old prophets and
the Master of "the Sermon on the Mount." But whether we
look from a higher to a lower level of appreciation, or from a
lower to a higher, we are equally limited by the atmosphere of
value which we carry with us.

In looking back at the historic series, as we have spread it
out, it seems indeed to bear the stamp of necessity. But this
necessity is merely subjective and a posteriori, and should not
be read into the historic process. It means simply that we could
not now take account of the facts in a different order, or with
a different meaning. If we look into the making of history,
we must not forget, however massive the accumulation of
experience in the way of customs, language, and institutions
may seem, that individuals built history, and that the social
products are the result of their accumulated purposes and
failures. In the making, as well as now in the interpretation,
the facts were plastic. While the facts now fit in, and seem the
natural outgrowth of their predecessors, other facts, had they
happened, would have fitted in equally well by transforming
their predecessors into terms of themselves. The facts them-
selves are gifts therefore, and it is for us to fit them together
as best may suit our purposes for the time being. The only
place where reality is determined or stereotyped, is in a stereo-
typed brain, in a mind that has substituted verbal counters
for real meanings.

Knowledge of the Future — The A Priori and Probable

The future has no content of its own, such as the context
of the past. What meaning it now has is present meaning.
The past has a chronology which is binding upon us. We
must respect the records of the past with their meaning. The
future knows no records, it respects no data. The future as
such, therefore, is pure ideal construction. While the social-
ized past has one dimension, and the present has three dimen-
sions, — the future has no dimension of its own at all so far as

TIME AND THE PROBLEMATIC 297

actual content relations are concerned. It is the projection
of the present with its observed sequences, qualities and re-
lations into the non-being or emptiness of the future.

That does not mean, however, that we can make up the
future out of the whole cloth of past and present. The future
is bound up with the creative aspect of reality, particularly
with the creative contexts of life and will. It is in part at least,
and so far as concerns its concrete individuality, indeterminate.
This can be best illustrated in our own development. The
self grows, or at any rate changes, with the reaction. In its
animal innocence of thought, it cannot predict the insight into
good and evil which may come by eating of the tree of knowl-
edge. While we must utilize past experience in meeting the
prospective situation, the alternatives which we thus abstract
from the situation are only instruments in the service of the
concrete process which singles them out. Prediction concerns
the abstract aspects of the facts at best. If reality did not
consist of a series of unique dynamic situations, if we could
predict a priori from the abstract elements or qualities precisely
what the compound would be, if in short nothing really hap-
pened, we should have no problem of the future.

It is this creative character of our world which compels us
to be empiricists, so far at any rate as the concrete facts are
concerned. We must qualify all our formulas by saying that
in so far as the relevant conditions are the same, we may expect
the same results. But it is only in the simpler physical pro-
cesses at most that we can for practical purposes control the
conditions. When we come to human volitions, the conditions
are being complicated by each act. It is only in the abstract
and on the average that we can have mathematical precision.
Aristotle already pointed out the difficulty in making particular
judgments in regard to the future : "It is indeed necessary that
that which is should be when it is, and that which is not should
not be when it is not, yet it is not necessary that everything which
is should transpire, nor that everything which is not should not
transpire ; for it is not the same to say that everything neces-
sarily is when it is and to assert in general that everything is
necessarily." 1 To make a long story short, all necessity rests

1 " De Interpret.," 19a, 23ff. (translation by W. A. Heidel).

298 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

upon a certain constitution of the selected facts, and the neces-
sity, therefore, is only guaranteed, in so far as the special con-
stitution is guaranteed. Such guaranty in our world can only
be pragmatic, i.e. for practical purposes certain processes can
be taken as repeating themselves. We can, for the particular
purpose, ignore the differences. We can ignore the fact that
our friend has grown gray, so long as his loyalty remains. How
often, however, we bank upon conditions being the same when
they are not the same. You change or the friend changes and
sympathy and fealty become impossible. Social conditions
alter and the best old laws become impractical. In our plastic
human world, at any rate, we must reckon with the uncertainty
of the future. And of late we have come to look upon all our
formulae as thus pragmatic and limited to the abstract and
observable aspects of the case.

The only scientific basis for the future is our belief in the
uniformity of nature, our faith that the present conditions are
in a measure legislative for those to come. The future which
science deals with is not the creative, individual future, but the
present constitution of things extended into the unknown di-
mension of that which is not yet. The future, therefore, based
as it is upon characteristics which have been abstracted from
the individual character of reality, must always be hypothetical.
Other things being equal, if our concepts hold, if the observed
uniformities are real, such and such things will happen.

The indeterminist and the determinist have committed the
same fallacy, so far as making one moment legislative for an-
other. Each resolves the stream of experience into abstract
motives and makes these play upon each other. The deter-
minist, having abstracted certain characteristics on the basis
of the past, insists that these must hold for the future. The
indeterminist, too, places his confidence upon certain abstract
considerations, which he emphasizes within the present, and
insists that an act in the past might have been otherwise. He,
too, neglects the time element. But if we use the consciousness
of regret as the basis for the judgment that we might have acted
otherwise, we must remember that the act itself has brought
new insight and that the self, therefore, which judges the past
is not wholly identical with the self which acted in the past.

TIME AND THE PROBLEMATIC 299

What is practically important is that, with the experience gained,
we can now do otherwise. If again we insist with the deter-
minist that the act must have happened as it did, because in
retrospect we must read it as consistent with such a past, we
must remember that had the action happened otherwise, it
would have been equally consistent with the past, since we
are judging character by outcome. In each case, our concepts
are the abstract leadings which enable us to a certain extent
to control our conduct on the basis of our insight. Were there
no leadings, social plans would be impossible. Were there
no change, no future, we should have no plans.

There is no such thing as prediction in any real sense. The
pre should at any rate be left out. Science, in its ideal con-
struction, abstracts from the time aspect and emphasizes only
the structural aspect of reality. In treating of the physical
processes, stereotyped as they are, we do seem to have a case of
mere repetition. But it would be mere dogmatism to suppose that
even here we have a real repetition. It may be simply repeti-
tion for us, with our gross system of averages. Scientific knowl-
edge is only approximate, a convenience for our adjustment.

If we take account of our scientific attitudes, they surely
are anything but stable. The so called laws and axioms of
science are being retranslated all the while. The only identity
here is the identity of mere symbols, not of meaning surely.
The symbols, 2 + 2 = 4, may be the same, but our whole con-
ception of number has been revolutionized within a generation.
The axioms of geometry, which seemed so absolute even to the
British empiricists, have been sadly torn to pieces within recent
times, and have received a new meaning altogether. The
symbolic equations are the only thing that has been stable
about the law of gravitation, and even these have been chal-
lenged of late as mere approximations. The conception of the
law itself is in the crucible of criticism. The law of conser-
vation of energy is no longer dogmatically asserted even by
physicists. Lagrange grants that energy may disappear, and
Maxwell that it may be increased through a sorting process.
It is, however, an important working basis. In the light of
history, therefore, it would be mere idiocy to suppose that our
conceptual attitudes toward nature are stable.

300 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

When we consider knowledge which deals with the plastic
world of meaning, here, at any rate, mere a priori dogmatism
soon proves its own absurdity. The man who makes the
social and individual future out of the whole cloth of the present ;
who regards his private attitudes as legislative for the process
of history, is bound to bitter disappointment, or at least to be
the laughing-stock of the future. The man who established
the Dudlean lectureship at Harvard, in order that future ages
might thunder forth their condemnation against "the damnable
heresies of the Catholic church," would probably be as chagrined
at the carrying out of the provisions of his will, as he is amusing
to us. A man by the name of Paine who gave five thousand
dollars, something over a hundred years ago, to establish a
trade school in Boston a hundred years in the future, did not
realize that the apprentice system would vanish out of our in-
stitutions before then, and that the courts of Massachusetts
would have difficulty in translating his will into present pur-
poses. Pessimistic theologians have mourned over the rejec-
tion of their religious concepts, their creeds of hell-fire, as Jonah
mourned over his gourd, not realizing that it is more important
that the universe should develop new meanings, than that it
should be held in the death grip of their past concepts. The
political reactionary is fearful of departing from the old order
of things with its manipulation by the few, and smells danger
in the arousal of a people's conscience and sense of fair play.
In the language of F. P. Dunne, as regards a recent political
convention : " ' The throuble looks to be over makin' th' timpry
organization permynint,' said Mr. Hennessy. ' That's all th'
throuble in th' wu-rr-uld,' said Mr. Dooley. 'Me frind wud
like to make th' timpry organization iv th' wu-r-uld permynint.
He ought to. He's timpry chairman, chosen by th' comity.' ':

There is indeed a certain continuity within the process.
In the midst of our human flux, certain themes seem to be per-
manent ; and in terms of them, we can judge the changing en-
deavors of the race. In the midst of the organic fluctuations
and transmutations, certain types or directions seem to remain ;
in the midst of the indefinite variations of inorganic compounds
certain qualities or elements can be traced as practically con-
stant. Our perspective of the past, therefore, enables us to

TIME AND THE PROBLEMATIC 301

make certain disjunctions of probabilities as regards the future.
At any rate, what happens in the future will not happen without
relation to the present. The future will be better somehow
for our seriousness, for our attempts at improvement, even /
though the particular gifts which the future may bring must j
be waited for. With our larger insight into the laws of process,
we can at any rate improve the present, and so be ready for the j
future. The quality of the gifts which the future brings at each '
moment are conditioned upon the set of the will which conditions
the future.

While we cannot anticipate that which is not created, while
we cannot read off a meaning which can only come into being
by a transformation of our present meaning, while it is always
true that the present truth must die in order that the higher truth
may come, still the present makes certain demands upon it-
self, which the present does not satisfy. It may be that the
demands are wrong, it may be that experience will embody the
demands in a new and larger meaning, but in either case, the
present provides problems for the future, and furnishes a cer-
tain direction to the future.

To recognize that the present makes demands upon itself
which it cannot satisfy, is a very different thing, however, from
holding that we now anticipate the fulfilment of these demands,
and compare our present meaning to a larger meaning. If so,
knowledge would be complete now and eternally. We may. re-
alize that our hypotheses are inconsistent, and yet be limited
to them. We do, indeed, believe that, somehow, knowledge
will not stop here, that by creating new hypotheses and by fresh
investigations there shall be a survival of the fittest which will
mean a greater approximation to truth. But if we could
anticipate that truth now, we would be foolish not to stop work-
ing. Whether right or wrong, we must make violence on the
kingdom of heaven by striving to coerce reality to fulfil our
demands or needs. Whether we succeed or fail, we shall gain
experience, in the light of which our demands shall have new
meaning. What is needed is an open mind to meet the future
without bias or prejudice, and to act on the light as God gives
us to see the light every moment of experience.

Nor must we be overconsistent. It may be necessary even

302 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

in science, though its aim is a consistent system of truth, to hold
to contradictory hypotheses for the time being, when such
hypotheses are useful in dealing with the facts. It may be
that the contradiction is involved in the nature of things. If
so, we shall have system in so far as it is possible, and we shall
be better able to anticipate the behavior of things. It may be,
and we have a deep-rooted faith that this is so, that the contra-
diction is due to our own chaotic purposes. If so, such a measure
of meaning as we can reach will be a necessary step for further
progress. Passive indifference can only mean failure in any case.

It is a safe rule to stick to all those demands which seem
essential for the largest life, whether we at present can reconcile
them or not. For purposes of knowing it may be important to
emphasize the unity and sameness and wholeness of things.
For purposes of action, on the other hand, it may be important
to take account of the diversity and individuality, the changing
and incomplete character of things. For ethics, for example, the
universe must be regarded as plastic, as amenable to human
purposes, and to a certain extent indeterminate in character,
if the individual life is to count for something. While what
seems essential now, moreover, may not seem so in later stages
of development, and while our beliefs are bound to have new
meaning as we go on, yet our beliefs are good in so far as they
now help us to live the richest possible life. The best religion
and the best philosophy, for us at any rate, is that which grows
out of our present demands, and meets our present needs. In
so far as they do so comprehensively and truly, we may be sure
that they will be taken up into a richer future.

It is well to keep in mind that knowledge does not exist for
its own sake, but for the sake of action and appreciation.
Philosophy may have a creative function, such as poetry and
art have. If, by creating a certain kind of belief world, we can
attain to a larger life than we otherwise could, why is not the
creation of such a belief world a legitimate thing, even though
it cannot be measured in terms of the prosaic standards of
science? In the spiritual reality of individual and social life,
creative faith must be regarded as one of the most important
factors. Without this, events do indeed happen differently.
With it, the broken sword can still win a glorious victory.

TIME AND THE PROBLEMATIC 303

Our finite attitudes towards the universe are, at best, com-
promises. Sometimes, they are contradictory, and only the
more useful for it. When the Presbyterians added to their
confession of preordination a clause on individual freedom and
responsibility, they laid themselves open to the charge of in-
consistency ; but perhaps it was the best they could do ; and at
any rate, they avowed openly what other religious creeds and phi-
losophies imply. While consistency is important, our universe
is too big for consistency, and we often have to hold to postu-
lates and hypotheses that conflict, because we cannot afford
to do without them. They serve our needs. Perhaps the
thinking and research of ages may resolve them into a more
comprehensive view. In the meantime, it behooves us to be
modest; to be open minded; to allow fair play of opinions;
and, while emphasizing what needs to be emphasized as we see
it, to regard our results at best as decidedly provisional, — step-
ping stones, let us hope, to better things.

" It may be that the gulfs will wash us down,
It may be we shall reach the Happy Isles,
But something ere the end, some work of noble note may yet be done." *

1 Huxley-Tennyson.

PART V
FORM AND REALITY

CHAPTER XVI

THE IDENTITY OF THE IDEALS

THE thesis of this chapter is that the ideals of life, of truth
and beauty and virtue, are identical as regards form or the
demands which they set to the concrete will. The difference
in our ideal activities lies, not in their form, but in the specific
end in which human nature strives to embody the ideals, —
the discovery of truth with its characteristic satisfaction, the
creation and joy of beauty, and the making of a social char-
acter with its concomitant happiness. In short, the content,
not the form, differentiates the ideals.

In dealing with ideals, as in dealing with other aspects of
experience, we must remember that philosophy must limit
itself to the overlapping problems. Philosophy cannot treat
in detail all the various types of concrete social ideals. It must
content itself by taking account of the large genera under which
these ideals group themselves according as they have to do with
thought, appreciation or volitional conduct.

There have been various efforts in the past both towards the\
unification and the differentiation of the ideals. But both \
types of effort have been largely futile from the failure to dis-
tinguish between the form and the content of ideal activity, -
between the ideal demands and their concrete embodiments.
A word first about the attempts at identification. The kin-
ship of ideals was felt by the ancient Hebrew psalmist in the
striking invitation: "Oh, worship the Lord in the beauty of
holiness." But we do not look for abstract analysis in this
quarter. We are reminded of a similar poetic identification
by Voltaire: "Only truth is beautiful, only virtue is lovable."
We naturally look to the philosophers for systematic statement.
Here, too, however, the identification will be found to be
intuitional and fragmentary.

307

A
308 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

y- *

Plato shares with his Greek background the feeling that the
good and true and beautiful are somehow one. In the " Protag-
oras " he strives to identify the virtues as knowledge, for it is
knowledge that must furnish the measure in the evaluation of
goods ; and insight when present cannot fail to control conduct.
Hence the problem of virtue becomes the problem of education.
By implication all the values of life are here reduced to truth.
In the " Symposium," beauty, with its intoxicating contempla-
tion, becomes the supreme ideal. In the ' ' Philebus ' ' he identifies
beauty and virtue in terms of their common denominator:
"Measure and symmetry are beauty and virtue the world over."
In the "Philebus" and the "Republic" he makes the good the
final genus, including under it truth, virtue, and beauty. But
these are merely brilliant intuitions, — looking now to the form,
now to the content of the ideals for unity.

In modern times Shaftesbury has summarized for us the
Greek point of view as regards this essential kinship of the
ideals. "What is beautiful is harmonious and proportionable;
what is harmonious and proportionable is true ; and what is at
once both beautiful and true is of consequence agreeable and
good." But this statement too is impressionistic. It fails to
divorce form and content; and as regards the latter fails to
furnish the differentia. It amounts to only a feeling for the
kinship of the ideals. It does not unravel the problem. The
same Greek feeling is to be found in the poet Schiller, as regards
the kinship of beauty and virtue, where, on the one hand,
beauty refines us into virtue and, on the other, the virtuous life
must be looked upon in its perfect stage as the beautiful soul.
Lotze, in like manner, feels the kinship of truth and beauty.
For him the ultimate self-evidence of the unity of truth "must
no longer be called logical but aesthetic and accordingly will find
the touchstone of its validity no longer in the unthinkableness,
but in the plain absurdity of its contrary." And again : "The
coherence of the many single elements of truth which enables
them to be ranged under a simple fundamental idea may rest

• upon assthetic propriety." 1 Here too the relation is a matter of

J intuition, not of clearness and distinctness.

My revered teacher, the late C. C. Everett, came back to the

1 Lotze, "Logic" (Eng. Trans.), Vol. II~ pp. 329-330.

THE IDENTITY OF THE IDEALS 309

problem of identification again and again. Thus he tells us :
"Goodness and beauty are really manifestations of truth."1
Again : " The three ideas of the reason are simply manifestations
of one and the same principle. The first affirms that which is,
the second that which ought to be, while in the third we find
that which is as it ought to be, the fulfilled perfection." 2 To
this relation to the will I shall come back later, but what made
Everett feel the kinship was the implication of unity in each
ideal.

Lately, there has been an attempt to identify the types of value
from the biological point of view, sometimes in terms of adjust-
ment and sometimes in terms of satisfaction. But apart from
the adequacy of the method, this is after all only the statement
of the genus. It still remains to state the differentia in each
case, whether of adjustments or satisfactions. Of course this
must be done in terms of concrete values. At any rate the
fancied unification is only vagueness.

II

If the effort,a at n^'fi^ntiojxpf ideals have been intuitional and
confused, so have the efforts at differentiation. Thus it has
been suggested that the aesthetic attitude differs from the scien-
tific and moral in that the aesthetic is isolated and sufficient unto
itself, while the other attitudes imply larger connections. But
in no case can we isolate so as to cut off completely from the
background of experience. This is the more of life, which our
ideal abstraction is intended to make significant. In each case
there must be the fringe, the suggestive value. Art is as
meaningless as science, where the individual fails to bring the
necessary equipment of experience. The object in any case
is a focus of suggestion, an effort, not merely to suppress, but to
control association in a definite direction. The suggestions,
however, must grow out from the expressed relations, — the
object, not from the mere label. They must be continuous
with the object and germane to it, — intrinsic and not merely
extrinsic, internal and not merely external to the theme. The
savage and the child do not discover the beauty in the Angelus

1 " The Psychological Elements of Religious Faith," p. 148.
'Ibid., 200.

310 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

because they lack the background of experience to suggest its
internal meaning.

Since our ideal strivings are meanings, they must in the nature
of the case select and abstract such aspects as will make the rest
significant. In a measure all idealization is isolation, emphasis.
But they must suggest, too, the larger setting and unity. The
whole is never the merely present even in art. We might define
art, with more truth, as companionship with the universe, to
which the selected aspect furnishes the friendly introduction.
Not merely what is presented, but rather what we bring in the
way of experience and demands, is what constitutes art:stic
creation and appreciation. The selected object is the focus, the
nuclear constellation of content, which suggests the richness
of concrete experience. All idealization is abstraction, but
abstraction not for its own sake, but for the sake of making the
concrete significant.

Since in each field the object is constituted by the selective
interest, we cannot make this the differentia. In the case of
each type of ideal realization, we must know the selective aim
for the activity to have meaning. I saw little of merit in a
painting before which I stood recently, until I read the subject,
"Fleeting Shadows." And then it was marvelous. The artist
had selected this aspect, the rest was foil. Lamb refused to
admit that 2x2 = 4 until he knew what use was to be made of
il_ Whether true or not depends upon the selective aim. Of
abstract quantities it is true, but not of human personalities.
Whether a deed is morally significant or not depends upon the
aim. If done from impulse, it is a mere natural event like the
falling stone. If done from motive, it indicates a good or mean
character. Thus all ideals tend in part to abstract, isolate,
frame. But they also have their larger individual and cosmic
setting.

It has been customary to credit moral activity with the aim
of improvement as contrasted with other types of ideal activity.
But it must be clear now that, in neither case, do we take expe-
rience as we find it. In each case must the immediate be recon-
structed in conformity with our ideal demands. In each case
must there be selection, emphasis, suppression of motley details
in order to make experience significant. In neither case do we

THE IDENTITY OF THE IDEALS 311

make the facts or data. We create by selection ; we bring out
the promising relations ; we experiment to express in terms of
the presented material what we deeply and truly mean as
idealizing selves.

Another attempt at differentiation of ideals is based upon
their relation to attention. The aesthetic ideal, for example,
is held to be characterized by spontaneous attention, uncon-
scious creativeness, the immediate absorption of the will,
while the scientific and ethical ideals, especially the latter, are
held to involve active and strenuous attention. Attention,
however, does not furnish conclusive differentia. The- moral
life cannot be distinguished from the aesthetic by the sense of
effort involved in the obedience to the moral law. We must be
careful not to confuse points of view, — the point of view of the
creative activity and that of the spectator of the result. The
latter does not necessarily require effort in any case. As regards
the former it may require effort in any ideal activity. Working
by genius does not mean working without effort, even though
genius is more than dint of hard work. Artists do not
necessarily dash off the results which we sometimes find it so
easy to appreciate. Spontaneous genius does not exist outside
the story books. Few realize the painstaking toil that has
entered into what seems to us so spontaneous and satisfying.
The original of many a stylist seems fairly lost in the corrections
which overlay it. The artist may have spoiled many pictures,
with heartrending consciousness lest he should miss the gleam,
before he gave us this masterly result. Nor is it an unmistakable
sign of art that we should enjoy it immediately, — as it were,
love it at first sight. TheJirst impression in the world of art
is not, any more than in the world of truth, necessarily most
worth while. In either case, the immediate hazy intuition
must be made clear and distinct by analysis of the idea of the
author in its various moments. This eventually brings back
the sense of unity greatly enhanced.

In the case of the moral life, on the other hand, active atten-
tion has been emphasized. But temptation and effort may
indicate only a bad education. They are no test of the worth
of conduct. The really moral life finds socialized conduct, the
proper volitional response to a common life, largely automatic, —

312 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

a second nature controlling the primitive type. The sense of
effort should be a transition stage to spontaneous obedience of
the moral law. In any case idealized conduct means controlled
or measured conduct, and this can only be had through training.
At the beginning of the ideal life the gods set labor. Spon-
taneous mastery, absorbed attention in the ideal object, in the
case of any ideal activity, logical, aesthetic, or moral, is the fruit
of training and self-control. The feeling of effort indicates the
novice. It has nothing to do with the worth of the activity.
Some people could not give spontaneous attention to anything
but rag time. That does not make them moral.

Each form of ideal activity has its ought, its sense of incom-
pleteness, the command of the ideal, or^ to use Professor Palmer's
phrase, the command of the whole to the part. Beauty and
truth as creative activities have their ought as well as the
moral law, — their sense of failure, their feeling for potential
wholeness, "which bids us neither sit nor stand but go" that
we may attain the ideal. From life's larger point of view, at
any rate, the poet, as well as the sick soul cowering before the
categorical imperative, feels the discrepancy between what is
and what ought to be. Hence the sense of fragmentariness,
hence the effort at improvement. The ought characterizes
all ideal realization in the process of becoming; and seldom,
especially in the deeper genius, is the process complete. Tragic
is the moment when he can say to his life's ideal : " Verweile
dock du bist so schon."

Sometimes, indeed, for a limited purpose, the consciousness
of discrepancy between attainment and ideals scarcely enters
into the particular judgment. Sometimes a particular truth
seems to come as a flash of intuition, the brief lyric pours
into a final mold in an ecstatic birth of beauty, the good deed
comes with a sense of enthusiasm and self-surrender instead of
effort. Each viewed in its isolation seems final and satisfying.
But such cases are exceptions, and, even so, are the gift of a
previous set of the mind, subconsciously incubated in the mean-
time. Goethe's " Faust " required a lifetime of labor to produce
and takes as long to appreciate.

As regards results to life as a whole, here too no sharp line
can be drawn. It is no detraction from beauty that it has

THE IDENTITY OF THE IDEALS 313

results on our larger activity. On the contrary, it inevitably
has such results and must be judged in a measure by them.
Art has no license to violate our other ideal demands. It
must be true to science in dealing with an actual world. It
cannot make its own anatomy or space perspective. It must
be estimated in scientific terms, even though it is not science.
So likewise must it be considered with reference to the larger
race life. It has subserved and still subserves a use in race
survival. As the grown man's play it has its important place
in the economy of human life. To be beautiful an object must
be idealized, i.e. liberated from the sensuous. Its suggestion
must be ideal suggestion. Thus it purifies. The same can be
said of truth. Truth has its results, its larger setting in life.
While it may not be pursued for its use, it has its use in making
life more efficient. While it is not morality, it is a noble pursuit
and gives dignity and calm to the soul. Nor is the moral ideal
to be judged merely by effects. It is sometimes, notably in its
highest instances, tragically out of accord with its temporary
environment. Sometimes it is permanently impracticable,
though nevertheless noble and inspiring. Extreme other-
worldliness, "love your enemies," mystical union, etc., may
never become practical types, but nevertheless they furnish noble
reliefs and corrective viewpoints to our work-a-day, prudential
world.

If again we try to differentiate the ideals from the point of
view of development, we must be consistent. We must be care-
ful to take them from the same standpoint. If we look at them
as ideal results or in retrospect, they of course cannot develop.
The past as such does not change. The hypothesis of Thales,
whether true or mistaken, marks a mile post in science. The
emancipation proclamation taken as a deed remains what it is.
It may be evaluated as a historic event independent of the
agent. So with the art work. Schubert's " Unfinished Sym-
phony " is as finished as it is going to be.

If we take the creative point of view, the particular results
become moments in a life history. Hypotheses are steps in dis-
covery, deeds are the marking places in the progressive realiza-
tion of will, each successive work unfolds the larger motives and
possibilities of the artist. Each Madonna of Raphael gives

314 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

not only the spectator, but the artist an additional insight into
his idealized conception of womanhood; and in the series we
can see improvement, clearer consciousness of aim. Finished
results, — absolutely finished, — are but an illusion from the
creative point of view, a testimony to our limitations.

If you look again at ideal striving with reference to the
plasticity of its world, it would seem at first glance as though
we had struck a profound difference. Truth seems to most
people to deal with a rigid, predetermined constitution, given
outright, while in ethics, in a strenuous way, and in aesthetics,
in perhaps a genial way, we must somehow and to some extent
alter the world to fit our ideals. The contrast, I think, is more
superficial than real. Truth, so far as it is our activity, is a
genuinely creative process. If there is an absolute truth, our
efforts must indeed seem feeble copies to an omniscient spectator.
But we have no first-hand knowledge of an absolute truth any
more than we have an intuition of absolute beauty. So far
as our finite experience is concerned, we create truth, — as we
create institutions and art, — to meet our needs. In neither
case do we proceed independent of experience. We must select
out of its richness the significant aspects. In neither case do
we make the laws arbitrarily, but rather discover their implica-
tions in our nature and in the nature of the universe. In the
last analysis, in either case, we may be imitating an absolute
mind, but that does not alter our finite problem. The realm
of truth is as plastic in the hands of the potter as the world of
beauty. The seemingly more rigid character of the former is
due to taking truth in retrospect instead of in prospect, as made
rather than in the making.

The contrasts which we have examined have been made so
striking by taking ideal activities from different points of view,
- the point of view of the spectator being contrasted with that
of the producer, the part-point of view with the whole-point
of view, the point of view of effort with the point of view of
mastery, the point of view of the internal meaning with the
point of view of the external relations. We can look at any of
our ideal activities from these and other points of view. We
can, for example, look at beauty from the point of view of
creative activity or from the point of view of the spectator or

THE IDENTITY OF THE IDEALS 315

assimilator. So in the case of truth or virtue. We can look
at separate results, — separate concepts, separate deeds, or
separate pictures, — or we can regard them from the point of
view of a self-realizing process of truth, beauty, and virtue.
In any case we must be careful, in comparing the ideals, to adopt
the same point of view for each comparison, — to compare
development with development, creative activity with creative
activity, finished product with finished product, etc. The
confusing of points of view led to the failure of the above
comparisons.

So long as we regard our ideal activities from the same point
of view, we find that what we can say of one ideal in the way
of formal characterization we can always say of the others.
There may be pedagogical convenience in setting the ideals
over against each other for certain purposes. But the difference
finally does not he in the form, but in the content. In our sur-
vey we have seen how some have emphasized the abstract
character of truth as wholly abstract. Some have emphasized
the selective character of art as complete isolation. Some have
emphasized the infinite demand of the moral law and contrasted
it with the finitude of our other ideals. But these are not fair
contrasts. They are not made from the same point of view.
The abstractions of truth must be made, as must the selections
of art and virtue, in the service of attaining a larger insight into
the concreteness of life, not for the sake of abstraction. Art,
like truth and virtue, only isolates for clearness and distinctness.
The seeming isolation of the frame, — of the specific science, of
the particular art work, of the particular life conduct, —
merges in its depths into the cosmic background and can be
understood only with reference to this. The object as framed
in the focus of attention serves but to suggest a vague sentiment
or "recollection" of the constitution of the universe which makes
certain ideal demands upon itself through us and in which the
sharp outlines of our abstraction fade into the moving, continu-
ous woof of reality. The larger part of the meaning is always
in the fringe. And if the ideal, as in the case of moral striving,
appears as an infinite imperative, this is no less true of our other
ideal demands in so far as we dwell upon the prospective, cre-
ative side and measure the felt potentialities of human nature in

316 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

terras of its finite attainment. We must strive to bring clear-
ness and distinctness not only into the ideal object, but we must
bring such clearness and distinctness into the relations of the
ideals themselves, and thus rescue them from the confusion of
mixed view-points.

Ill

Having laid down the thesis that the ideals, as abstract or
formal, are identical in all our striving for evaluation, we must
now try to make clear what these ideals are. It will be seen on
scrutiny that our ideal activity implies four demands which the
object must meet. They may be stated as unity, harmony,
simplicity, and universality. In the first place there must be
unity. The various parts of the situation must be capable of
being understood in terms of one idea, they must follow from a
common principle or purpose which they are seen to embody.
This can be shown in scientific synthesis, whether inductive or
deductive. A generalization is never a mere collection or
summary of particulars. The mere cinematographic registra-
tion of facts in repetitive memory does not constitute truth.
The sequence of rain and sunshine, weddings and divorces,
births and funerals is a meaningless show unless we can read the
sequence in terms of a universal. Events, in order to be science,
must be seen to follow from an hypothesis, and the hypothesis
from the events. They must, for our pragmatic purposes at
least, embody an idea or tendency. Bodies must not merely
fall, but they must be predictable in terms of a mathematical
law ; life must not merely present a riotous sequence of change,
but there must be within it a tendency to change in definite
ways. There must be overlapping, the unity of a universal.

The same is true in art. What we must first discover in the
object of beauty is the idea expressed in the details, the universal
embodied in the diversity of parts. This universal may not
lie at the surface. You must live in the presence of the Sistine
Madonna, you must be willing to give serious study to Hamlet,
to grasp the significant unity. Else the Sistine painting is a
collection of more or less pleasing figures, Hamlet a series of
more or less interesting episodes. You can't go to sleep over
the great masterpieces any more than over the great scientific

THE IDENTITY OF THE IDEALS 317

hypotheses and grasp their significance. You must enter into
the creative idea of the artist.

What is true of science and art is likewise true of virtue.
The virtuous life is not a series of episodes, — of more or less
beneficent impulsive acts. Such a life is non-moral. You
must find the meaning, the motive, the idea to be realized in the
multitude of events and choices. They must be strung on a
universal in the light of which they can be interpreted. If you
are taking account of life as a spectator, you must put yourself
at the actor's point of view, or as nearly so as your human limi-
tations permit. Not only through the ages, but through the
acts of each individual will with which you strive to sympathize,
there must run a purpose. The shallow excuse: "I did not
mean it," is an attempt to place oneself outside of moral re-
sponsibility. When it is clear that a deed follows from no prin-
ciple, we not only individually, but legally, abandon the ethical
criterion of good or bad. We see then that the first demand upon
ideal activity, whether taken from the agent's or the spectator's
point of view, is the discovery of an idea or universal in the
variety of facts.

In the second place, in all ideal activity there must be har-
mony, — the parts must support or reenforce each other within a
whole. Take it first in the realm of science : Facts must lean
on ideas, and ideas on facts. There must be fluency of transi-
tions or adjustments. There must be not merely evidence, but
organized disjunctive evidence, where the parts supplement and
reenforce each other. And the evidence must be adequate.
It must be proportional in complexity to the idea which it aims
to support. We cannot rest a momentous hypothesis on slender
evidence and feel security or ease in the relation, any more than
we can rest an immense edifice on slender pillars and have our
will satisfied with the result.

Harmony in science means not merely organization within
one hypothesis, but it means also that hypothesis must support
and reenforce hypothesis within the overlapping fields of expe-
rience. Species must supplement each other, as well as indi-
vidual lean upon individual within the larger kind which we
strive to define. Harmony, organization, is therefore of the
very nature of scientific system. One negative instance, one

318 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

outstanding fact which fails to support the rest within the scope
of the idea, destroys the idea's claim to express the facts of the
kind and challenges to a new idea.

In art the importance of harmony is even more obvious. It
is not enough that each part bears the imprint of the idea, like
a heap of stamped bricks, but they must mutually reenforce
the idea. In Guido Reni's Aurora every part testifies to the
glory of the coming day. But more than that, each part helps
to reenforce the idea. Movement, brilliancy, color, beauty of
form, contrast, — all cooperate and converge to fasten the
attention to the idea of nature's oft-repeated wonder. In
dramatic opera the human voice, the instrumental music, the
scenic setting, the acting, — all combine to reenforce the idea
of the composer. Let any one be false, and the harmony
is marred.

That harmony is essential to the moral life has been em-
phasized both by common speech and by the philosopher.
The moral life is the balanced life, the rounded life, the life
in which each tendency of human nature plays its proper part,
each event receives its proper emphasis. Even with unity of
motive a life can easily be marred by wrong emphasis, by making
the trivial into the focal and the important into the by-play.
The virtuous life is the life which gives each interest and moment
its due. It is a just life. What harmony in each case — logi-
cal, aesthetic, and moral — emphasizes is that each part has a
claim which must be recognized ; and in turn that no part
may stand by itself. It has a claim, but it is a claim within a
whole. The parts must support the principal idea; but this
they can do only when the idea is adequate to incorporate the
parts.

Again, all ideal activity demands simplicity or economy.
The ideal tolerates nothing superfluous. It is jealous of its
rights to express itself. Sometimes the characteristic of sim-
plicity has been emphasized as all-sufficient to define ideal
activity. Truth is simple, beauty is simple, virtue is simple.
So they are. But simplicity alone does not define these atti-
tudes. In the first place, simplicity is meaningless until you
specify your type of unity. It expresses the negative rather
than the positive side of ideal selection. Again, simplicity does

THE IDENTITY OF THE IDEALS 319

not necessarily mean agreement or harmony within the unity.
We must not read the parts out of court, as has so often been
done, for the sake of simplicity. Parmenides did so and left
nothing but empty being, — neither true, nor beautiful, nor
virtuous. Simplicity is only one ideal demand and must be
pursued in harmony with the other demands.

In science, the demand for simplicity means that entities
or hypotheses must not be multiplied. The simplest hypothesis
which will meet the facts is regarded as scientifically true. Our
theories must be molded upon reality as we must take it in our
experience. While the more complex Ptolemaic astronomy
might be made to meet the facts by cumbrous additions, we
believe that the simpler Copernican system comes nearer
expressing the real stellar relations. We must reduce our
theory to the fewest principles which will meet the situation.

In art, as in science, simplicity is a fundamental demand,
but here too simplicity must vary with the idea to be expressed.
Hamlet cannot be expressed in as simple terms as the clown.
The idea must have adequate complexity. Where, however,
the inferior artist betrays his lack of genius is in the superfluous
details, the obscuring promiscuity. No wonder art has seemed
the mere removal of the superfluous, the chiseling away of the
extraneous marble. This point of view, however, forgets that
marbles do not come veined with Apollos and Venuses and that
simplicity itself is meaningless except with reference to the
selective idea.

In the moral life, too, simplicity is important. There must
be directness of aim, the suppression of irrelevant detail, em-
phasis of the essential. How many a life loses itself in the mere
multitude of busy episodes. The great life differs from the
small in its simplicity, as the novel differs from gossip. Here
again simplicity is not the only demand. Mephistopheles is
more simple than Faust. We must judge life by its type of unity
and the adequacy of this unity to harmonize the claims of life.
There may be over-specialization as well as too much com-
plexity. The idea alone can decide what details to suppress,
what tendencies to emphasize.

Finally, all ideal activity implies universality in the sense
of social objectivity. This does not mean a consensus of all.

320 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

It means that those with adequate development and training
should be able to share with the agent the ideal object. Ideal
activity cannot terminate in mere private states of consciousness.
This again can be seen in all the varieties of content which the
ideal may take. First of all, there can be no private truth.
The processes of truth must be capable of verification by other
observers. Else we have mythology, hallucination, error.
Science is primarily a social institution, the outgrowth of our
common mental constitution and common situations. Neither
can beauty be private. It may require development and culture
on the part of the spectators. But if no one but one should
ever find an object beautiful, we would probably regard him
as having a queer taste. Art, too, is a social institution, our
common joy in creative activity and its results. It must define
common situations. The social character of the ideal becomes
still more striking in the case of the moral life. We may over-
look an individual's erroneous thinking, we may laugh at his
outlandish taste, but we cannot neglect his anti-social conduct.
Our ethical judgments are through and through social judg-
ments, — the balancing of claims from the standpoint of their
fitness for a common life. True, the immediate social environ-
ment may prove wrong. It may give the hemlock to Socrates
and crucify Jesus. But to some social environment our con-
duct must seem valid and fruitful, if we are at length to be
pronounced moral. Only the immoral man claims an ethics
of his own, and he only as an exception for himself, not for
others. Even the fruits of vice could not be enjoyed in an
anti-social world. *

We have seen so far how in each mode of ideal activity the
ideal is identical. It is the content that individuates. We
have examined in turn the four characteristics of the ideal and
their application to the different ideal activities. The question
may be raised : Cannot these characteristics be still more sim-
plified ? This has been attempted in the past. I shall note only
one such possibility, and that is the reduction of our ideal
categories to the demand for clearness and distinctness. Des-
cartes made this the final criterion of truth. It has been sug-
gested by Hildebrand as the final criterion of art. I believe
that such a reduction is impossible if we give this criterion the

THE IDENTITY OF THE IDEALS 321

subjective significance which Descartes attached to it. We
must reduce it to its " cash value," in terms of the relations which
we discover within the content that embodies the idea. What
people feel to be clear and distinct is as various as their tastes ;
and so long as we place the criterion on a subjective basis, we
can have no standardization. In fact a criterion which needs
to be standardized, as Descartes tried to standardize clearness
and distinctness by an appeal to a God who would not deceive,
is hardly a criterion. If, on the other hand, we give clearness
and distinctness a pragmatic significance, it will be found to
imply all the ideal characteristics already stated. Prag-
matically, it becomes the clear and distinct expression of an
idea in its selected content, or the clarifying of the content in
terms of the idea. Such clear and distinct expression must have
unity within the parts. The idea must include the facts, or the
facts must fall within the idea. There must be organization
or the mutual support of the parts. There must be no irrelevant
details. There must be social objectivity. Just because the
idea is thus pragmatically clear and distinct, it must compel the
social approval of the competent.

IV

If ideals are differentiated by their matter and not by their
form, we must cast a passing glance at the content of the ideals.
From the point of view of content, we may take human nature
in its three classic modes as cognitive, as appreciative, and as
volitional, bearing in mind that ideals have no application at
all until human nature attains the complexity of being con-
sciously selective. Ideal demands, when applied to the relation
of ideas to perceptions and to other ideas, become the quest
for science. To attain fluency, harmony, simplicity, and uni-
versality as regards the agreement of the idea with the consti-
tution which it intends is ideal realization in the realm of
knowing. But we have an affective nature, too, and objects
must be measured not merely in terms of their existence, but
in terms of their value. To make objects fluent, harmonious,
clear and distinct, and universal, so far as our human appreciative
nature is concerned, constitutes ideal realization in the realm of
appreciation. Lastly, our volitional claims must be measured in

322 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

terms of other volitional claims in individual and social history.
To fulfill the ideal demands of fluency, harmony, simplicity,
and universality in the realm of our volitional conduct, consti-
tutes ideal realization in terms of virtue.

We would have, then, as our criterion the clearness and
distinctness of the idea as expressed in the selected object, —
the object of thought, the object of feeling, the object of volun-
tary conduct. When the clearness and distinctness pertains to
agreement with a selected constitution, we have truth ; when it
pertains to appreciation, we have art ; when it pertains to the
evaluation of will, we have morality. In either case the idea
must be adequate, it must be economic, it must leave no out-
standing details. The difference is not in the ideal, but in the
process or object selected.

It is evident that, of the three, the last overlaps, in a vital
way, the other aspects of our nature. Indeed it is impossible
except for abstract purposes to treat human nature as divided
into compartments. The ideational activity would be but a
pale ghost except as floating in the affective and volitional back-
ground. In turn, beauty must have meaning, and so involves
the ideational side. All creative activity finally must have its
spring in the will and its tendencies. If ideals are identical in
their form, they also overlap in their matter. They must blend
in the unity of the one life.

I have tried to show that our ideal activities are identical
as regards their form, the ideal demands to be realized. By
this insistence I do not mean to ignore the fact that the ideal,
as realized in the different modes of human nature, differentiates
into unique species. Science, art, and morality are different
in the concrete, as truly as they are identical in the abstract.
They constitute specific embodiments of the will. When we
seek truth we do not seek beauty as our aim, when we seek
beauty we do not seek morality. Satisfactions they all are ; and
as such they are all included in the good, as Plato pointed out
long ago. But they are different species of the good. Each
works within a certain type of material or instrument, through
which it realizes its function in making clear and distinct
the end. The matter or instrument of science is conceptual
relations ; the matter of art is concrete imagination ; the matter

THE IDENTITY OF THE IDEALS 323

of ethics is impulse. Each sets itself certain limitations,
respects the nature of its material. The ideal, in the case of
truth seeking, sets itself the limitation of agreement with a
selected constitution, abstract or concrete. That our will
sometimes figures as a creative factor in this constitution, that
it sometimes makes ideas come true, does not alter the necessity
for our cognitive nature to take account of the facts as made,
of discovering the laws in the sequence. While human nature
must make ideal demands upon the universe to have truth, it
can only succeed provided that the universe lends itself to such
idealization. We cannot legislate arbitrarily to nature. We
must try to discover clearness and distinctness within the rela-
tions of nature. That success here is possible is due to the fact
that reason is not an arbitrary addition to nature, but that
reason grows up in the soil of nature, is nature's reflection upon
itself.

In beauty the aim is not the breaking up and systematizing
of reality for the discovery of its constitution, but for the
sake of social and constant objects of enjoyment, — the joy in
activity and contemplation on the part of the developing,
historic will. This producing of agreement between nature and
our affective-emotional human nature is a different value or
satisfaction from that which our search for truth yields. Here
too, however, nature and human nature must conspire. As
parts of the evolution of nature, we are such and nature is such,
that we can discern relations and objects which furnish perma-
nent and spontaneous joy in the play of our faculties. We are
made for the sunset as much as the sunset is made for us.

Finally, the ethical end in the concrete is the harmonious
adjustment of the individual to the historic social will, — the
discovery of right or justice in the measure of volitional claims.
Here, too, life or nature lends itself to such adjustments of
claims. Our ideal demands are found to be practical and, in the
progressive realization of the meaning of life, the only practical
ways of social conduct. Nature again conspires with human
nature.

While the concrete values or ways of realization are different
for thought, feeling, and character ; while they lead to unique
satisfaction of the will, they must support and supplement

324 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

each other, and, because subjected to the same ideal demands,
they must fundamentally and ultimately agree with each other.
That is, the truth must, without surrendering its specific
character as true, also be found beautiful and noble; and so
with the other ideal values. "Human nature in its progressive
realization can be seen to be fundamentally one, and the realiza-
tion of the true must be seen to be fundamentally bound up
with the right and the beautiful, and all to be species of the good
of the entire self, though this does not prevent us from recogniz-
ing certain differentia in this ultimate good. The good in the
concrete means proper functioning on the part of human nature
in its various relations, the harmonious activity of all its capac-
ities, fluency of life, consistency of transitions. The right
means fluency of functioning as regards human individuals in
their institutional relations, the proportional equalization of
claims. The beautiful means the harmonious and complete ex-
pression of our ideal demands in terms of our affective nature, the
feeling of fitness and support as regards the various parts of the
aesthetic object. Truth means the fluent termination of the clear
and distinct idea in its intended facts. In the equilibrated life
of the individual as a whole, all human nature, — cognitive,
emotional, and volitional, — must function with ease and fluency
of transition without any conflict of the activity for the true with
the realization of the beautiful or the right. They are never-
theless specific forms of the good ; and, in our imperfect finite
development there may be provisional discord." l In the mean-
time, while the conflict is partial and halting, the unity on the
formal side is clear and eternal.

It is clear that, in idealizing human nature as an individual
whole, the same ideal demands hold as in the case of the spe-
cific types of realization. Here, too, there must be unity, har-
mony, simplicity, and universality. An ultimate ideal must
be found comprehensive enough to include all of our human
tendencies. Further, the parts must harmonize or reenforce
each other. The part-ideals must work together so as to supple-
ment and interpenetrate within the whole of life. Here, too,
there must be simplification and universality. Within life in
its wholeness there can be no conflict of reason.

1 "Truth and Reality," pp. 238, 239.

THE IDENTITY OF THE IDEALS 325

Such wholeness, however, we fail to find within our finite
human realization. And as our nature must be loyal to such
a wholeness or perfection and cannot rest in the provisional and
partial realization, the religious consciousness, the conception
and worship of God, must eke out our finite limitations. In
our religious loyalty we feel that our ideals are concretely
realized. Religion adds no new values to those already men-
tioned. But it adds the sense of completeness, of unification,
and of conservation to our finite ideal strivings. The identity
of the abstract form is here exchanged for the unique unity of an
individual life, in which form and content are fully blended,
where the unity of the ideal purpose embraces all the facts,
where the parts all support each other, where there is clearness
and distinctness of relationships of parts, and where all mere
subjectivity disappears in the organized whole. This final unity
of concrete interpenetration is at the other end from the abstract
formal ideals which we have considered.

The end of life is to transcend finality, in the sense of abstract
ideals with their sense of obligation, and to reach spontaneity,
— unity of form and content, perfect activity. In a perfect
being the ideals interpenetrate each other as they clothe them-
selves in a matter no longer foreign to themselves, but their
idealized and transfigured embodiment. This living unity
we worship as God.

CHAPTER XVII

FORM AND THE OUGHT

The Nature of Form

WE have seen in an earlier chapter 1 that all our general-
izations presuppose three fundamental characteristics, viz.
variables, recurrence, and form : It must be possible to analyze
out, within the flux of reality, certain distinctive qualities or
entities ; these must be generic, i.e. they must recur in various
individual situations, and in various moments of time ; and,
lastly, they must be capable of being formulated in terms of a
few simple principles, — the object with which we deal must
have a definite "architecture." This applies to all our gener-
alizations, whether of pure mathematics, or of physics, or of
social relations.

Now, it is a notable fact that while we have recognized the
importance of the characteristics of variables and recurrence,
the characteristic of form has often been treated as accidental.
It has seemed somehow as though the form were added to the
constitution of reality by our minds. Our mind is so constituted
as to read order into the universe. It looks for resemblances
and groups things under laws and kinds. It stamps its an-
thropomorphic ideals and purposes upon its world. So impa-
tient is it of chaos and diversity, that it takes short cuts. It be-
comes dogmatic about its superficial analogies and formulae,
and treats them as absolute. Further investigation, however,
discloses new diversities and complexities. The old formulas
are seen to be crude approximations. The cry is for a first-
hand acquaintance with things. The old generalizations are
condemned as fictions, which in a great measure they have
been. Sometimes, the human mind has become skeptical as to

1 See Chapter III.
326

FORM AND THE OUGHT 327

the possibility of ever discovering any objective order, such
skepticism being always in proportion to the previous dogma-
tism. Moreover, with our human limitations, the subjective
element is likely ever to be prominent, and the critical spirit
is apt to find again and again that what we had taken for the
architecture of reality is in fact the artificial creation of our
immature will-to-believe. Under such circumstances, the
interest in the individual variables comes to loom large; and
nominalism for the time supplants realism. Objective form
is for us at any rate, as Plato saw, a limit in the flux of human
opinion.

It is only fair, however, to point out that our knowledge of
the diversity and generality of the structure of our world is no
more final than our appreciation of its form. The three must
proceed pan passu. We discover the diversity when we
attempt to sort it into kinds ; and we cannot know about either
except as we try to define them, or formulate them into proposi-
tions and aesthetic structures. We cannot derive the generality
from the diversity, or the form from either. The question is
what diversity or generality is significant, — makes clear and
distinct the problem in question. The principle of economy
cannot be deduced from mere happenings whether recurrent
or otherwise. That we shall combine the predicates of reality
in certain ways to establish order and meaning is a fact of
another dimension from their mere chance existence.

It would seem to the unbiased mind that the aspect of form
has the same basis in the nature of things as have the dis-
criminations of individual occurrences and their resemblances.
We do not make the laws of falling bodies, or chemical propor-
tions, or the natural series of elements, or the unity of the or-
ganism, or the consistency of the argument, or the harmony of
the art work when we discover them. In so far as our formula-
tions really work, we must regard them as the architecture of
the world which we strive to know, and not merely as the
architecture of our mind. It seems reasonable that the untiring
search of our mind for order, faulty and stumbling though it is
in execution, is somehow a reflex of the world of which mind
is the conscious expression. As Santayana puts it: "It is
no part of the essence of numbers to be congenial to me ; but

328 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

it has perhaps become part of my genius to have affinity to them,
simply because nature of which I am a part, and to which all
ideas must refer to be relevant to my destiny, happens to have
mathematical form." 1 As our primitive instincts are rec-
ognized to be responses to fundamental characteristics and
demands of our environment, so we must recognize that our
higher instincts which have to do with form, with order and
beauty, are indeed orientations to the universe of which we
are a part. They are, in the Platonic sense, " recollections "
of the constitution which interpenetrates human nature as
well as nature and of which we become conscious under the
stress of social dialectic. As the flatfish imitates through its
eyes the geometrical pattern of the bottom upon which it
rests, not knowing what it is doing, so the mind, through a
long process of trial and error, comes to imitate the formal
constitution of the universe. For the most part, its adaptation,
too, is blind groping with relative approximation. Only as it
rises to reflective consciousness, can it begin to bring into clear-
ness and distinctness the higher laws of its being. And even
then, it must be largely prejudiced by the fact that it must
judge the great world through the peculiar limitations in which
its pattern reveals itself in human experience.

From the fact, however, that the laws of thought are implied
in our mental constitution, and have been forced upon it in
its adjustments to the objective world, we have at any rate a
presumption that the laws of thought are the laws of things.
This presumption comes to be further verified through thought's
success in dealing with its world in its hypothetical procedure.
Reason is not an accident, but has come to pass, and is success-
ful, because the world is somehow congenial to it. The prag-
matic procedure must judge by fruits, and if ideals are outcomes
of the human experiment to meet its world, they must have a
basis in the nature of reality. An abstract analysis which em-
phasizes elements, and neglects the organizing relations, gives
us bricks without mortar, and fails to restore the structure
which it has torn to pieces.

There have indeed been true realists in the past who have
recognized the importance of form — your Plato and Aristotle,

1 "Winds of Doctrine," p. 120.

FORM AND THE OUGHT 329

your Spinoza and Leibniz. The difficulty that we meet is
that they have not been clear as to the nature of form. There
has been especially a tendency to confuse form with the concept
of activity. Even Plato, the first to appreciate the reality
and significance of form, sometimes labors under this confusion.
In the " Sophist," he makes his Ideas forces in order to guaran-
tee their efficacy which, no doubt, seemed hazy enough to his
contemporaries. As imitated by our purposive will, form, no
doubt, comes to have efficacy, since organized effort, whether
individual or social, is more effective and economic than un-
organized; but as pure form, it can have no more efficacy
than other abstractions.

The poverty of Aristotle's ultimate concepts leads to the same
difficulty. Aristotle's two ultimate concepts are matter and
form. But matter, by hypothesis, is a purely passive principle,
hence form must be the active principle in order to account
for motion. It is true that Aristotle is by no means consistent
in the use of these concepts. Matter sometimes seems to be
endowed with a certain refractoriness or inertia. The active
principle, again, is sometimes treated in a mechanical fashion
as moving the world by push. But in the last analysis, hazy
though his statement is, it seems to be form which exercises an
attractive influence upon matter — the higher stages of form
upon the lower, and pure form upon the process as a whole.
Upon one thing, however, Aristotle is clear, and that is that
form is not produced by the process, but legislates to the proc-
ess. Hence evolution is not a one way process, from formless-
ness to form, as Herbert Spencer would have us believe ; but
form in all the varying themes and movements of cosmic evolu-
tion is always equally real.

Aristotle's difficulty shows itself not only in his concept
of evolution, but in his concept of definition. A thing must be
defined through its functions. Hence the functions constitute
the form of the thing. But since the functions are an indefinite
number, we never could have definition on this basis. Rather
form consists in the selection of such functions as are relevant,
as will make the thing or class clear and distinct. It has to do
somehow with economy and simplicity, not with the endless
variety of the perceived world. Here the advantage appears

330 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

of distinguishing between the concept of energy, with its indef-
inite number of variables, and the concept of form. Form
has to do, not with transformation, but with formulation —
with the possibility of denning our situations in the terms of
clear and distinct principles. We have seen that the simpler
and more stereotyped kinds of reality, such as are dealt with
in mechanics, have the advantage in simplicity ; but the tend-
ency towards clear and distinct types is present in the more
complex stages of reality, too, — in the world of life and mind,
with their creative transmutations. The bias of the human
mind for such clearness and distinctness must be regarded as a
cosmic fact.

Spinoza is a striking example of the confusion of form with
activity. When he is not speaking as a physicist or psycholo-
gist, but treating of reality from an ethical and metaphysical
point of view, activity becomes identical with clear and distinct
ideas. Now it cannot be disputed that activity becomes
valuable in proportion as it is organized activity, with a clear
and distinct direction. It is thus, that it becomes formulable and
understandable. But it is not the clearness and distinctness
which produce the activity. They have to do with another at-
tribute of reality.

Leibniz has, in the main, copied Aristotle and his ambiguities.
The monads develop by their inherent form, but they also
seem to be stimulated to do so by the existence of a hierarchy
of monads, having for its poles, confused unconscious percep-
tion as the lower limit, and the clear and distinct self -conscious-
ness of God as the upper limit. Leibniz, however, sometimes
drops into the mystic conception of the perfect monad as
creating the lower monads by some sort of emanation from it-
self. What is most significant, however, in Leibniz for our
purpose, is the principle of sufficient reason which generically
expressed amounts to a demand for reasonableness or logical
coherence in our world, so that its motley variety can somehow
be stated in terms of clear and distinct principles or defining rela-
tions. In this, we have, indeed, the essence of form.

What the formal constitution of the universe determines is
not the endless variety of changes, fluctuations, and mutations.
These are due in part to the internal, in part to the external

FORM AND THE OUGHT 331

conditions of the energies of our world. What is formally
predetermined is a certain clearness and distinctness, a certain
definiteness of type required of the fluctuations that appear,
if they are to survive. This demand for clearness and dis-
tinctness comes to consciousness in our mental organization.
But it must also be conceived as characteristic of the con-
stitution of the cosmos itself of which mind is a part. Only
so can it be relevant and successful. Nature works like an
artist. While we cannot predetermine the particular attempts
at art, we know that only those attempts can survive as art
which are clear and distinct.

Powerless indeed is this form to create its special content.
It cannot work in vacuo. The grist must be furnished by pro-
cess. This may be the free acts of willing subjects ; or, lower
down, chance variations, of the inwardness of which we are
ignorant. Nor can the form arrest the flux, nor annihilate its
space conditions ; but, within the process, it can determine
that what shall survive must have worth, the particular rich-
ness or coloring being due to the process within which the form
selects. The universe indeed becomes other for our earnestness
or frivolity, our strenuousness or laziness. But this, at least,
is true : that what survives must be in line with the direction
of the process. The tragedy, moreover, lies not only in will-
fully missing the good, but in intending the good, and because of
ignorance of the complexity of life and of the future, doing the
evil ; the well-meaning man having to proclaim in the tragedy
he has wrought : "Das ist nicht was ich meinte."

Form is nothing, measured in terms of the world of sense-stuff,
with its content and uniformities. Yet it is infinitely more
valuable than the world of stuff. It can be no less real than
energy, for it determines its meaning and direction. It cannot
work independently of the finite, but in the transmutations of
that which is, it asserts its supremacy. It determines the
survival of the structures of stuff and ideals. For our ideals
are structures striving to reflect or embody eternally the in-
finite direction. But their eternity is only in the intention ;
their content is relative.

Form is eternal. Since form is not stuff, mind-stuff or any
other stuff, it is not subject to time and process. Only stuff

332 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

is transmutable. Having no content, not being itself stuff,
form itself is not subject to transformation. The formal con-
stitution which sets the limit of process is not itself process,
because then it would be relative and cease to furnish the
direction for the protean variations of evolution. It remains
constant in the flux. Thus we are forced to contrast, with
Plato and Aristotle, the world of stuff and process with the
world of form. The universe does not indeed become pure
form ; the logical dualism remains ; but pure form sets the final
survival conditions of process. The highest ethical and reli-
gious type is not cold form, but energy molded into form, and
form expressed in energy — the perfect life.

It has been supposed by some that in order to insure the
eternity and reality of form, we must have a static universe.
This is due to confused thinking. To have truth and worth
in the universe it is not necessary to be "stoppers of the uni-
verse." But it is necessary that the process shall be in some
way selective. As in the dark, all cows are gray, so in a flux
without direction there can be no valid distinction of values.
So far from its being true that only a static universe guarantees
worth, ideals can have no meaning in a static world. In such
a world, everything is, as it were, dumped together, and error
and evil, in so far as they exist, have as much claim as truth
and goodness. Ideals can have meaning only in a selective
process. Even the ideal of uniformity can have meaning, as
Poincar6 has shown, only in a universe of flux. For it exists
in the service of prediction, and what prediction could there
be in a stillborn world? Flux on the one hand, and selective
direction eliminating what is contrary to it on the other, —
these seem to be the necessary postulates in our world.

With Heraclitus we may affirm that this direction is "the
divine which feeds all human laws." It is "the common"
in the sense that it is valid for all and binding upon all, as op-
posed to the many who live "as if they had a wisdom of their
own." It is not the common in the sense of the identical in the
many opinions, but as the limit in the historic process. What
is common to the savage and the civilized man, to the fool
and the wise man, would be pretty thin and meaningless. On
the contrary, form manifests itself in the concrete process of

FORM AND THE OUGHT 333

history, in the real flux, which is not merely a rearranging of
bits of substance or mathematical models. It is no doubt
true that the common in the sense of the institutional heritage
of the race is, on the whole, the safest guide of life. Institu-
tionality is the result of workability for the time being. But if
the direction were merely the common, history would be a
mere dead level without movement or progress. Its flashes of
light must come first of all through the individual.

It is the 080?, "the path," of process and survival; but not
in the sense Heraclitus meant it, — an upward and downward
path, from fire down to water and earth and up again, "fixed
measures" being exchanged, — a merely circular process hi
which nothing really happens. Not so with the real time pro-
cess, where all uniformity or stuff is relative and absolute
permanency is merely an ideal limit. In the protean guises
of the process, form legislates. And while it cannot stop the
process, it determines what can have meaning and existence
in the process. It is not the projection of the ideals of the
individual or of the race at any time. Nor do they intention-
ally point to it. They point to their own realization except
as they qualify themselves : Not my will, but the eternal
Ought, the objective demand for form, be done; and in so
far they are contentless. The pointing or direction lies in the
destiny "which shapes our ends, rough hew them how we will,"
not fatalistically, but by eliminating those free acts or accidental
variations which do not fit its direction. The formal consti-
tution of the universe, like the voice of Socrates, speaks only
in the negative. Its content is ever changing and ever new.
It is the direction of history : and yet for us it is ever born
afresh out of the process it determines. It has no concrete
being except as it is thus embodied in the fleeting moments. It
thus furnishes "the way" in the trackless void of the future,
as it is continually incarnated into the finite. It throws the
golden light of ideals ahead ; and yet at every moment it is
a new, because finite light, with a new color and radiance,
always, however, determined by the same form.

Form is creative, but it creates not by production, but by
elimination. It is creative as the artist is creative, i.e. by
selection. It is superior to "essence," as Plato would say, i.e.

334 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

to concrete truth and beauty as historic products, because it
determines their worth and survival. It gives beauty to the
perishing things of earth. It is both the "heavenly pattern"
and the artist. It is a real or ontological factor of the
world.

It is quite evident that Plato in the Republic and Symposium
did not mean Idea in the sense of meaning or concept, because
it is higher than dialectic — presupposed by all thought and
worth in the concrete. Plato's insistence upon the reality of
the Idea remains of eternal significance, though this must not
be confused with the existential class concepts nor with forces,
as Plato himself and his successors sometimes did. What
Plato failed to see is that the Idea can only create in a flux
world and has no other content but the flux. It is indeed an
abstraction, but not a mere ideal abstraction. It intersects
the concrete world of process. Only thus could it give signifi-
cance to process. If Plato could only have made use of the
conception of struggle and evolution (already dimly outlined
by Heraclitus), then the world of flux and the Idea of the Good
could both have been accorded their due reality. He would
not have had to confess failure as he does in the Parmenides.

If we cannot give any definite content to the conception
of absolute direction ; if it remains for us merely the demand for
law and worth; if, to use Plato's metaphor, we cannot look
upon the sun itself, what is its child, its phenomenal mani-
festation? What evidence for its existence in the finite, struc-
tural world do we have? As we have developed the sense of
extensity with complex instinctive coordinations to meet
the reality of space ; as we have developed the sense of dura-
tion with complex structural adjustments for measuring the
flight of time process; as we have developed the feeling of
effort to symbolize energy, so we have developed the feeling
for form with its tendencies and sentiments, and its sanctions
in social institutions, to meet the demands of the universe upon
us. That, in the nature of things, just because the process is
infinite, and because our ideals are part of the process, our ideals
must be finite, does not invalidate the evidence of the feeling
for ideals so important for the race. That, moreover, these
sentiments and ideals are growing more essential and more

FORM AND THE OUGHT 335

adequate to meet the requirements of life must strengthen the
faith in their objective reference.

The process of discovery must, in the case of form, as in
the case of other aspects of our world, be provisional and tenta-
tive. It must come through the growing insight of the in-
dividual as he strives honestly to master his data. It appears
in experience first of all as a personal gift. In this lies the trag-
edy of progress. The new insight runs counter to the customs
and thoughts and habits of the mass. The self-preservative
instinct of society rises against it; and the bearers of the
new insight suffer accordingly in the transition and may be
sacrificed in the readjustment. But by its intrinsic superi-
ority, its simplicity, and reasonableness, real insight must
eventually conquer prejudice. A new plateau is established
in social evolution. This, in turn, is broken through by new
stimuli from within or from without the consolidated group;
and the equilibrium of custom is again disturbed, until a new
adjustment can take place. While the human mass always
retards the creative individuals, and while it is in the first
instance impressed by the externals of prestige and power
rather than by merit, the new insight must in the end prove a
revelation of our own deeper nature, of our own formal con-
stitution.

This is, indeed, as Kant maintained, the categorical impera-
tive. It commands unconditionally. It does not grow out
of our inclinations and impulses, but it determines the worth of
these. Its sublimity surpasses the starry heavens, for the whole
cosmic process is subject to it. In its consciousness we rise
to meaning and freedom. We are part of another world to
which the stuff world is subject. It is not the good will, but
it determines whether wills are good or not. But just because
it is an absolute limit ; because all our finite ideals are relative
to it ; because it is the rationale of history and not its product,
therefore no specific content can be given to it. The maxim
of universality and all other maxims are but relative to it. We
can only characterize it in the most general terms, and those,
too, are finite. It means orderliness and comprehensiveness
in the regulation of individual as well as social life. It is the
law that there shall be law. Perhaps that is the safest deter-

336 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

mination we can give, in terms of reason, of that which trans-
cends and determines reason. Its concrete content must come,
in every age, from its finite setting in human institutional and
individual experience. Thus we are able to meet our concrete
duties in our generation.

The ideal must become concrete for us, as Kant saw, by
being realized in a kingdom of ends. This is not so simple
as Kant thought. For Kant, every individual is a little god or
absolute, legislating for all men and the universe at large. But,
on the one hand, the individual historic will is not autonomous,
it must accommodate itself to the institutional life of the race ;
and the two may clash. Human beings, even when they think
themselves most rational, do not legislate in the same way, and
life must proceed by compromises. On the other hand, the
institutional heritage is not final. The individual may be
wiser than the institution. But both are subject to the eternal
direction of the process; this alone is an absolute categorical
imperative.

Like the First Mover of Aristotle, form does not itself move ;
but unlike Aristotle's "final cause," it is not the cause of move-
ment, but it determines by its existence the direction and worth
of the historic process, and thus accounts for progress. It is
not only transcendent, but ever immanent as part of the con-
stitution of the finite, i.e. it is the meaning we discover in
the finite, but more besides. Else the finite would have no
significance. Only thus could the yearning in the finite for
the complete and whole originate. In being thus incarnated
ever anew into human lives and the order of history, it can
say with the Christ: "Lo, I am with you always, even unto
the end of the world." It is the Spirit of Truth which guides
and shall guide us in all truth.

This conception agrees with the Thomistic as against the
Scotist position. It holds that God himself is determined by
the norms of goodness and truth, rather than that these
norms are the arbitrary result of God's willing. God on this
theory would become the concrete, finite, and individual em-
bodiment of form. We cannot discover ideals from what God
wills. If it were possible for God to make ideals by arbi-
trarily willing them, we should have to have some Hermes to

FORM AND THE OUGHT 337

bring them down ; and even then, they would be merely arbi-
trary, not binding intrinsically. It is through our ideals, on
the contrary, that we come to piece out the concept of God, —
not as the arbitrary lawmaker, but as the fulfillment of these
formal conditions of human nature and nature. This fulfill-
ment is a dynamic or growing fulfillment, — growing in complex-
ity, creative of higher levels of realization, without invalidating
the formal constitution which simply demands to be fulfilled.
This fulfillment does not exclude but implies time. It makes,
however, our values transcend time just in so far as the ideal
is fulfilled. Its fulfillment, even in aspects, means eternal value.

With Hegel, we must agree that history has cumulative
meaning. This holds, however, in the long run, and not always
in the sense that chronological and logical unity coincide. His-
tory is a real process, not merely a system of logic, a scaffold-
ing of categories. It cannot, therefore, be read off simply
by logical implication. History is real happening with real
tragedy and real success. It might have a different content,
and thus must be studied empirically. What the form deter-
mines, is that what survives in the cumulative transformations
and chances of history must have worth.

With Fichte, we must agree that the universe has a trans-
cendental constitution. But this constitution is not merely a
transcendental system of knowledge, a Wissenschaftslehre, not
even Fichte's, which he thinks our free wills reject to their own
damnation. The universe is not merely an ethical system,
but an ethical process. That which is "over-individual," is the
direction of this process; and we are not merely view-points
within a system, but real actors determining the content, and
so the character of the world. How we will, or fail to will,
makes a difference to what the ethical process as a whole can
realize, and not merely to our individual significance or suicide.

The ethical process cannot be like the Buddhist Karma., for
if life is simply the causal result of what precedes, there can be
no attainment of an ideal ; there can be neither good nor bad,
but simply the automatic record of the cumulative process.
Life in that case must remain imprisoned in the iron grasp of
the past. No, causality itself must be relative. There must
be some fluency in the process. But most important of all,

338 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

the criterion must not be simply a product of the past, but an
independent attribute in order that it may pass upon causality
and flux alike. The Karma permits of no salvation ; no waking
up from the evil nightmare. The horrible dream must go on.

Validity and Form

The most fundamental dichotomy of our ultimate attitudes
to the universe is that based upon the reality of form. The
theories in regard to the stuff of the universe may be academic
merely. Pragmatically, metaphysical materialism and meta-
physical idealism may have identical outcomes. Democritus
and Priestly found room for the same objective values as Plato
and Fichte. The practical potentialities of their worlds
were the same. It is different with the contrast of formal
materialism and formal idealism. While formal idealism holds
that form is somehow inherent in reality, formal material-
ism holds to the attitude of brute chance. For the latter all
relations are external relations. In the theoretical realm this
means that there is no valid reading of events. There is only
expediency. In the practical realm it means that might
makes right whether in personal or group relations. Nor must
we confuse formal materialism with the concept of scientific
mechanism. The latter is a purely provisional attitude for a
special purpose. It does not, or should not, claim to be a
final philosophy. It is, as a matter of fact, an unconscious
mathematical idealism. For formal materialism, meaning and
value are accidental. Ideals are somehow a poetic fiction, a
momentary addition to our world without intrinsic connection
therewith. The events of the universe have no direction.
They simply happen. And the sequence is determined in
every case by the external accidents of the situation. Formal
idealism, on the other hand, holds that ideal realization is not
foreign to reality, but in some way grows out of its inner
developing nature. It insists that there must be another and
more inclusive dimension of reality than that of mere natural
sequence.

True, materialism has always insisted that such a dimension
is superfluous. But materialism makes far too great demands
on our credulity : Reason grafted on chaos by chance variation,

FORM AND THE OUGHT 339

ideals superimposed upon the fortuitous play of atoms by
accident, and this the truth, the absolute truth about it!
Far saner seems to me the attitude expressed by Plato in the
Meno: "That we shall be better and braver and less helpless
if we think we ought to inquire, than we should have been if
we indulged in the idle fancy that there was no use in knowing
and no use in searching after what we know not; that is a
theme upon which I am ready to fight, in word and deed, to
the utmost of my power." For must not the assumption that
truth is an accident prove suicidal to materialism itself, in so
far as it aims to be a philosophy ? Metaphysical materialism,
as much as idealism, is founded upon a faith in form. Democ-
ritus, no less than Plato, assumes that the world is amenable
to reason, though for the former the real truth is atoms and
the void, for the latter the Idea of the Good. We must some-
how provide for value and significance in our world. Else
why philosophize ? If truth is an accident, if the flux of things
has no direction, then truth and error, virtue and vice are the
same, and it becomes as absurd to speak of a materialistic
philosophy as of any other kind. The same accident that
makes ideals can unmake them. I cannot conceive of truth
as even an ideal limit in such a world. A sane cosmic theory,
whatever metaphysical stuff it may assume, must admit that
under certain conditions the universe awakens to the signifi-
cance of truth and beauty, to the recognition of form and mean-
ing. For such are the facts, whatever be the stuff of things.

Without an objective form or direction, I do not see how
validity can have any meaning. Such form is implied incur
beliefs in validity and worth. It is confirmed by the very
necessity, — the practical, as well as theoretical imperative-
ness, — of these beliefs. Since Augustine, it is a common-
place that we cannot argue truth or worth without assuming
form. What if some one denies the possibility of validity?
In such a case, all argument must stop. One opinion is no
truer than another. Such a skeptic cannot criticize our argu-
ment, our logic or science. For by his own mouth, he stands
convicted that there is no false argument. If we confine him
in an insane asylum, he cannot argue that we are unreasonable,
however brutally he may resist, even as a lion may resist con-

340 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

finement. He cannot blame our conduct in so doing. For
on his own premises there is no right conduct, except what
prevails; and we must be right if we prevail. He may insist
that there is no beauty, but he cannot criticize us for regarding
him as a bore, if we do have the feeling that he is a bore.

Any theory of the universe, on the other hand, which dis-
tinguishes degrees of validity, which holds that one state of
conciousness may be better or truer than another, implicitly
refers to a standard, a measure more comprehensive than each
individual's momentary feeling or view-point. To deny this
is to land in the contradictory implication of a standard more
absolute than all, unless indeed we carry our skepticism to the
extent of denying the validity of our skepticism and so commit
intellectual suicide. We may lay it down then that all evalua-
tion, skeptical or believing, implies a standard, transcending
the immediate moment and socially valid. But the question
remains : How must we conceive this standard ? I see only two
possibilities : We may assume with the absolute idealist a com-
plete all-comprehensive, eternal experience. In this we must
even now be sharers. We must move according to its logical
necessity ; we must unravel its logical categories ; in the con-
sciousness of its completeness, we must realize our finite frag-
mentariness. I agree with Royce and his master, the divine
Plato, that there can be no ideal of relativity. In a world
where there is no other standard than that which seems to
any consciousness for the moment, any dog-faced baboon or tad-
pole would have as valid a claim as would the wisest of men.
The possibility of error does imply an objective constitution.
But an absolute and inclusive experience I do not feel compelled
to assume. For me it is neither a logical necessity, nor does
it answer my religious demands. If the universe is thus com-
plete and perfect, it is difficult to see how our consciousness of
fragmentariness and evil could ever arise. As the necessities
of our existence call for adjustment to a world in which change
and plurality with all their darkness play an important part,
it is difficult to see of what practical use such a perspicuous
hypothesis can be.

If we take the universe, on the other hand, at its face value
and acknowledge it for what it is, — a stream of processes with

FORM AND THE OUGHT 341

its novelty, failure and tragedy, — then we must conceive the
standard in another manner. As this standard is not con-
stituted by experience, individual or social ; as it cannot be
regarded as an accidental product of the process, and yet can-
not be merely external to the process, we must seek it in a
form inherent in the process. If the process has a formal
direction, dictating, not what can arise, but what can survive
within the process, then the significance of the process as a
whole, reflective or non-reflective, is guaranteed. And while
we cannot read off an absolute truth when we do not have it,
we have in this formal constitution a limit which transcends
our finite moments, and furnishes the possibility of evaluating
our finite degrees of truth and worth. The limit, as concretely
posited by us, partakes, indeed, of the finitude of our positing ;
but the consciousness of this limit, however it may vary in
content with human experience, becomes a corrective none the
less for our comparison. And on the reality of the limit must
depend in the end all validity, however relative, of truth and
worth.

It is evident, therefore, that the concept of validity has a
real basis only in a world which has form. If the process of the
universe is merely a chance affair, no ideals can be enforced,
or be binding whether mechanical or ethical. Science in such
a world would have no guaranty for its ideals of simplicity and
unity any more than ethics for its ideals of worth. What
keeps warm the passion for science is that in spite of the com-
plexity of the world, growing ever more apparent in the course
of new discoveries, the facts can be more and more sorted under
common principles ; the Chinese puzzle of a world does seem to
indicate that some parts belong together, and the faith in spite
of failure ever springs up afresh in the truth seeker's breast
that the rest will yield to the same ideals.

Radical empiricism is impossible as an ultimate philosophy.
It is true, as the radical empiricist has argued, that in such a
world one postulate is as valid as another, — the ethical pos-
tulate is as valid as the epistemological. But this is merely
an argumentum ad hominem. On radical empiricism no ideal
could be valid. Such a theory must derive the form from the
variables, order from chance, validity from arbitrary agreement

342 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

or from the fiat of individual will. But if validity is made, is
a matter of convention merely, what objective coerciveness can
it exercise, what standard can it furnish for the permanency of
values ? The difficulty is not altered by selecting the race as the
unit. Certain values prove permanent and necessary — not
because the race has willed them — but because when the race
in any of its members does will them or feel them, they prove
themselves intrinsically superior or higher ; they set conditions
of survival to the race because of the social unity and coopera-
tion thus made possible. Because the formal conditions exist,
therefore it becomes advantageous to discover them, — though
they are, indeed, already implied in the yearnings and aspira-
tions which are a part of our nature. There can be no made-to-
order validity. This would be accidental, and not universal.
It could not give us the concept of progress, the limit of finality.
Suppose we try to conceive our universe as without form.
This is already a contradiction, for in such a world there could be
no conception, no law, no meaning. To conceive is precisely
to discover form. Such a chaos must in so far as we can include
it in thought at all, be a limit derived from the relative absence
of form, from the relative chaos of values, which we approximate
in our inferior universes of conduct and appreciation. We can
spread these out in a regressive series, and so reach as a limit
the concept of formlessness. Could such a formless universe
exist at all? It is not pur business to make universes, but to
try to discover the laws implied in the constitution of the world
as experienced. Certain it is, we cannot think such a universe
as existent. Our mind is shaped for a universe of order. But
while we cannot conceive a formless world as existent, form
and flux are logically separable. Some lives are more formless
than others, some attempts at thinking and appreciation more
chaotic than others. Ideals do fail of realization for the time
being — perhaps some always. Great personalities are cruci-
fied, great artistic creation goes unnoticed, and is forgotten.
This does not, however, invalidate the reality of ideals; and
they prove themselves when they become part of the current
of experience again. They may be eternal, even though existen-
tially they do not for the time being prevail. Even though they
are forgotten for a time, they still have worth. They may prove

FORM AND THE OUGHT 343

survival conditions in the sense that life or evolution fails
because it does not grasp them, fails through its relative form-
lessness. To have value, as well as to be survival conditions,
they must be appreciated and thus willingly or purposefully
conformed to. In the life of a perfect being, the survival
conditions thus become intrinsic. A perfect being has life in
himself, he is intrinsically eternal. And not only this, but he
can spread, or bring to birth in others, the consciousness of
form, and thus create worth in others.

Whether the time process has always been conscious of direc-
tion is not the question. This, while genetically interesting,
has nothing to do with the reality of direction. We have not
always been conscious of space and time, and other char-
acteristics of reality, but they have, none the less, conditioned
behavior until we have acquired the tools for recognizing them.
So direction must have existed before the consciousness of it, to
give significance to process when we come to reflect; and for
that matter, to bring about reflection. For why should we
raise the question of form? If there was a time when reality
was conscious of no meaning, it must at least have had a
definite direction toward reason. The process must shoot into
reflection by a law or tendency which reflection in retrospect
can see to be inherent in the nature of the process, and not as
a result of mere chance. Otherwise reason loses all validity
as well as efficacy, and the mechanical ideal becomes merged
with the rest in the general chaos.

If it is the limit of an absolute direction that gives meaning
to our finite and fleeting oughts, to our relative ideals, must not
the limit, then, be as real as the terms it limits ? The straight
line is surely as real as the varying curvatures of which it is
the limit. I am speaking here of reality, not of worth. The
straight line is worth more, or is more significant, than the
multitudinous curves, but that is not the question here. If
we grant the reality of our finite purposes, must we not grant
also the reality of the limit which conditions their significance ;
which prevents their being swamped in absolute relativity or
brute chance? Must not direction, without which process is
unintelligible, be as real as the process ? If it is helpful, more-
over, to suppose that there is somehow in the universe such

344 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

an ideal limit which regulates worth and survival; if even
cosmic and biological evolution seem to involve such a direction
to be intelligible; if, when it becomes conscious of itself in
man, it can make significant and legislate to facts and impulses ;
if truth itself is more than an accident, and it is not a decep-
tion that there can be approximation toward a whole of truth,
goodness and beauty, then this limit cannot be merely our
fiction, but must be involved in the constitution of the process.
I cannot see how the pragmatic conception of truth can get
along with less than this concept of absolute direction. If it
implies that process is amenable to purposes and can be guided
by purposes, that the test of ideals is their workableness, it
must somehow account for the presence and place of purpose in
the process. That the process is through and through reflective
is a violation of the pragmatic principle itself, for there are surely
some facts which we need not and cannot recognize as purposive.
We seem, therefore, to be in a dilemma : Either we must accept
materialism, that ideals are accidents and have no efficacy
in the process; or we must hold with absolute idealism that
there is no process, but that the universe is one complete
whole, the purpose eternally fulfilled. . In the former case,
truth becomes merely an illusion. In the latter, truth becomes
inaccessible, and the world as we have it is illusion. The only
way we can steer safely between the Scylla of materialism and
the Charybdis of static idealism is by keeping before our minds
the concept of direction. This makes purposive significance
possible without stopping the universe. It also pieces out the
ideal beyond our finite purposes, instead of making it a mere
unaccountable fragment in the process without any setting in
the universe as a whole.

Form and Ethical Realization

We estimate the ethical worth of life by its form, its direction.
This direction must not be a mere function of what each in-
dividual desires. To make the satisfaction of impulse its own
criterion would destroy all criteria. For impulse is legion, and
life would resolve itself into a chaos of conflicting desires;
into what seems to each individual moment. If satisfaction
is the test of worth, then whose satisfaction, that of the pig or

FORM AND THE OUGHT 345

the man, the fool or Socrates? The worst tragedy of all
perhaps is that some are satisfied when they ought not to be.
The optimism that the satisfaction of impulse is a sufficient
standard presupposes a preestablished harmony between in-
clination and right, the individual and the whole, the present
and the future, which has not been attained and which can only
come by the accommodation of impulse to a standard more
objective than itself. The limit which in the end determines
worth must itself be independent of impulse. That definite
lines of conduct exist must somehow be due to it. This is
real idealism, as opposed to naturalism under whatever guise,
spiritualistic or materialistic. Naturalism makes the Ought
a mere function of what is. On the contrary, it must legislate
to that which is. What pleases may not be what ought to
please, and if we indulge in tendencies that ought not to please
us, a standard, objective to ourselves, forced upon us by the
cosmic process, must sooner or later condemn us.

It has been held that the ideal must be the outgrowth and
index of impulse ; else there could be no false judgments. But
how could there be either true or false judgments if impulse is
its own criterion? These involve a reference to a constitution
beyond impulse. They imply an objective form. We must,
of course, admit that ideals appear at a certain stage in the
biological series ; but when they appear, they appear as leaps,
as new ways of evaluation, not as mere products of the past.
Why do such leaps rather than others prove to have permanent
significance? This must be because the universe somehow has
a direction of its own. It is not accounted for by mere chance.
If ideals cannot pass upon impulses unless they grow out of them,
they surely cannot do so if they merely grow out of them. They
must have their own credentials. Strange that thinkers who
ridicule Plato for hypostasizing the Idea of the Good, which
when properly understood is more than an hypostasis, should
find it so easy to hypostasize the mechanical ideal of atoms and
molecules.

To say with the Hegelians that the ideal is already implicit
or potential in the impulses must mean very much the same
thing, if it means anything. That impulses are good or bad is
hardly implied in the impulses. The question of worth can

346 REALISTIC UNIVERSE

arise only when impulses are evaluated according to an objective
standard. That the impulsive satisfaction has worth in the
end is not due to its being desired, but that it fits an objective
constitution, present and future. This gives "immortal in-
tent" to the process. That the eternally prudent may be
sacrifice, that what it aims at cannot as such survive, can be
no part of short-sighted impulse.

Hedonism, when sorely pressed, must have recourse to "on
the whole and in the long run," not realizing that it thus
abandons satisfaction or pleasure as the ultimate standard,
and substitutes a selective constitution. It is this, and not the
mere subjective satisfaction or dissatisfaction, which decides
what structures can survive and therefore what pleasures can
survive.

Neither does self-realization furnish a final standard. Con-
sistently stated, it is simply natural history, not ethics. Practi-
cally, it would mean the riot of absolute individualism. Perhaps
the most picturesque statement of this doctrine is the speech of
Aristophanes in Plato's " Symposium." The myth of the division
of the double men and double women and the men-women and
each half longing for the other, signifies that love, or the yearn-
ing of the soul, means self-completion or the attaining of one's
own, the complement of one's being. We must not, however,
neglect the qualitative difference in selves. There are many
types of selves, and each type desires its own fulfillment. If
self-realization is to be the criterion of life, what self is to be
realized, the baboon self, the pig self, or what sort of self? If
all but human selves are to be excluded, what sort of human self?
Not the criminal self nor the insane self, surely ? Only a normal
self could be the standard. As Plato says : " He must be a wise
man who is a measure." But what is normal?

Psychologically viewed, the ego may sometimes aim to realize
or define itself. It may aim to realize social institutions. It
does aim to realize its own tendencies, egoistic and social.
But what determines the worth of the activity is not the mere
realization of tendencies, but its conformity to the ideals of
the race and ultimately to the direction of history. Perhaps
such a self has no business to be. Its whole universe or per-
spective may be sordid and mean, its complement brutal. In

FORM AND THE OUGHT 347

that case, the ethical process is not self-realization, but the
elimination of that type of ego. The doctrine of self-realiza-
tion, tacitly at least, assumes a preestablished harmony between
the ideals of the individual and the whole, or that if each one
desires his own realization he at the same time desires the good
of the whole. Such a fallacy could only be maintained by such
ambiguous shiftings as that between the real good as opposed
to the apparent, the true to the actual, the eternal to the tem-
poral, in all of which it takes no great insight to see that there
is a reference to a constitution beyond the individual ego.

Biologically, self-realization can hardly be seriously main-
tained as a final standard. We have become so constituted,
as a result of the demands of the universe upon us, that we re-
spond in certain ways. To look out for ourselves is only one of
the many demands that are made upon us. Our adjustment
in the nature of things is largely institutional, and must become
more so, as a result both of biological and social heredity. To
fit into institutions, present and future, must therefore be the
biological test of an ego worth preserving. The test in the end is
extra-individual. And as institutions are also subject to the
law of survival, the test becomes extra-institutional as well. It
again implies the attribute of direction. A man, moreover,
who should be as self-conscious as the self-realization theory
demands would be a pretty sickly sort of specimen. Not self-
completion, but the yearning for an objective Good, to refer
to Plato again, is true realization.

The fallacy of the doctrine of self-realization, in spite of much
that is noble in its appeal, is that it takes human nature as an
absolute entity. The fact is that human nature is essentially
in the making, and that it differs in quality in different individ-
uals, and at different stages of development. Primitive man,
so far from being a little lower than the angels, was not much
above the brutes. The finer instincts and emotions have devel-
oped by degrees through social selection. And the process of
making man in the image of God, shaped to live with his kind
in justice and love, is still going on, and must go on for countless
ages. There are a few individuals of exceptional nobleness of
quality, whose realization seems supremely worth while ; these are
prophetic of humanity to come, and their greatness lies in divin-

348 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

ing and incarnating the universal of the race. True realization
must mean a better social order, an improved humanity, a
higher type of personality. It cannot be written in merely ego-
centric terms, but has its base in a progressive humanity, and
in the cosmic order of which humanity is a part. It is here that
the standard must be found in the last analysis. Impelled by
a faith which we can but dimly understand — a faith which has
led the race through a long past in search of the promise — we
must be willing to risk and sacrifice for this greater humanity,
whatever may be our personal fortunes. Out of such stuff is
progress made.

Since Spencer's time it has been fashionable to speak of
ideal activity as adjustment. It is not always clear what the
adjustment is to. It must be to some sort of environment.
But what is the environment to which the soul must adjust
itself ? It is not merely present sense-perceptions, surely. The
adjustment must be to the future as well as to the present. It
must be capable of being taken up into the cumulative move-
ment of history. The present ideal attitudes must fit into the
future process of life. To hold that the ideal is at each stage
of the process a mere function of the is, the result of the acci-
dental shooting together of the various tendencies of human
nature, and also hold that it has the right to control and evaluate
these tendencies, is even more incredible than the materialistic
statement that the ideal is a mere epiphenomenon, irrelevant
to the going on of the real process. But the latter bankrupts
all truth seeking and all ideal endeavor. Epiphenomenon is
after all only a technical name for a he. Why should the pro-
cess produce something which does not express its real nature,
has nothing to do with its existence, an unaccountable illusion ?

Neither can we find a final standard, as some maintain, in
the consensus of likes and dislikes. It is true that the most
important part of the adjustment of civilized man is to the
institutional ideals and customs of the race. These furnish a
provisional measuring rod for individual life. But social agree-
ment, while on the whole a safer test than individual desire,
is not absolute. Can any thinking man be satisfied in merely
obeying the oracle of Delphi, "to worship the gods according
to the laws of the land"? Socrates may have meant to do so,

FORM AND THE OUGHT 349

but the Athenians were right, that he introduced strange gods,
— new ideals hostile to their conventions. Every institutional
embodiment of form is relative.

Nor can individual reason furnish an absolute criterion,
however important in recognizing the relativity of our concrete
ideals and the need of a standard. Sometimes, indeed, the
individual is wiser than society. Else there could be no prog-
ress. As Heraclitus says: "It is the law, too, that we obey
the counsel of one." But individual reason at best is dependent
upon its historic setting. It is limited by the axioms of its
immediate social nexus, the ideals and sentiments of the age.
It finds that reasonable to which it is accustomed. It easily
finds arguments for the stake or the golden rule, the Inquisition
or the French Revolution, according to its setting. An appeal
to pure reason cannot lift us above the relativity of history.
The rational self like "the economic man" or "the average
individual" is a convenient fiction. At most, it is an ideal limit
to which we can give a general form, but no content. If it
exists now, it must dip in, like Emerson's Oversoul, from a
super-individual sphere. It if does so infiltrate under favorable
conditions, it can only be apprehended in terms of our concrete
experience, and so the apprehension of it becomes finite and
relative. It is not a separate compartment in our mundane
self, "unspotted from the world."

Even if there is a more comprehensive reason than human
reason ; granting that such a reason can know the total object
of science, the present constitution of things, with its laws and
uniformities, in a real time world such as ours, such a reason
is limited. It could not, except hypothetically, read off the
future. Its attitudes toward the future must be pragmatic
postulates; and nothing would seem more certain than the
transformation of present values. Even such a reason would
presuppose direction, beside present omniscience for the validity
of its judgments. Its judgments would have to fit into the
future, as well as into the present, to be absolutely true. How
much more evident must it be that our reason does not constitute
its own world, present and future! We cannot now be said
to mean what we do not mean; and when a richer meaning
supplants the poorer and more selfish, that is not because we

350 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

meant more than we meant or because we wanted failure when
we sought success. Paradoxes do not explain. We must take
account of the creative aspect of the process. In the process
as we become more deeply conscious of its formal demands,
the superficiality of our former insights comes to light. If we
learn modesty in regard to truth as we have it, that is not be-
cause we know more than we know, or possess an absolute truth,
but because we have learned from the past that our truth,
however satisfying for the time, is provisional. There is a
constitution which transcends our purposes, whether individ-
ual or social. This selects or eliminates in the course of the
process.

Evolution and Direction

A generation ago, in the first enthusiasm of Darwin's dis-
covery, evolution seemed the magic key to all mysteries. But
the criterion of the survival of the fittest has meaning only
when we define what environment is intended. Otherwise it
amounts merely to saying that what does survive is fit. If
we mean by fitness, conformity to a temporary environment,
then it may indeed happen that under certain conditions, the
inferior is better adapted to survive. The hostile micro-
organisms which get the better of us in disease and death would
thus prove themselves our superiors.

Evolution, therefore, must derive its meaning from the con-
ception of direction. Even such fragmentary cumulation of
significance, as we find, would otherwise be meaningless, for we
could have no reason for supposing that the later is any better
or truer than the earlier, even on the whole and in the long
run, or that the process ought to be read one way rather than
the other, unless we assume such a cumulative direction. This
is the real measure of the process. The prerational stages
of the process, whether individual or racial, cosmic or human,
would be irrelevant to reason unless they somehow prefigured
or were prophetic of reason, i.e. unless they had form. That
there shall be reason cannot be an accident, if we can reason
about things. When at last man awakes from the long slumber
of the ages, pregnant with tendencies which ages of selection
have forced upon him independently of his individual will, "he

FORM AND THE OUGHT 351

lays his hand on his bosom and feels it is warm with a flame
out of heaven" —a yearning for that which, for our present
consciousness, is not and yet gives meaning and value to that
which is. It is this which makes the time process ever mean more
than it knows — not its wisdom, but rather that in spite of
its blindness it comes to fit into a larger pattern. This makes
the present, in so far as it is meaningful, fulfill the past in so
far as it has form ; and as the checkered web of the time pro-
cess emerges out of its instinctive darkness into the future,
this formal constitution furnishes the warp which insures a
unified whole.

This form or direction is not originated with reflection.
Reflection cannot create this demand for meaning and unity,
for it presupposes this very demand. It is not a will attitude.
If it were, it would be subject to the law of change, and so could
not furnish the absolute limit of our striving. It is not the
result of experience, because experience only comes to have
meaning and value with reference to it. Neither can time
create^it, for time has no direction, knows no ideal. It can
but transmute endlessly that which is, each after its kind.
What shall survive, if anything but chaos, must be left to
another principle. For "time," as Heraclitus has so strikingly
put it, "is a child playing draughts." In the flux of process,
individual desire and social institutions, intuition and reflec-
tion, prove alike relative. What remains is only. the direction.
This must be real, else there is no meaning. This is the onto-
logical limit of truth and worth, forced upon the individual by
the constitution of reality and the necessities of life, not a
mere ideal positing. Provisionally, we may regard our demands
for meaning and worth as biological categories. They do appear
in the evolutionary process. They are involved in race ex-
perience, and have been forced upon us by race survival. But
this only pushes the question back. Why are they conditions
of race survival? For we must look at these conditions not
only from the point of view of the individual, but of the whole
process. They must somehow be involved in the formal
constitution of reality throughout the time process, thus to
condition reflection and life alike. They are the manifestations
or incarnations in history of that eternal form, which is with

352 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

us always from nebula to society, for even the astronomer
and the geologist insist that their facts are amenable to cate-
gories of form.

If you ask how such a formal constitution can condition the
process of evolution, and yet not be energy, I would point out
on the one hand, that if we must assume such a constitution in
order to make experience intelligible, then it must exist. And,
on the other hand, I would point to other attributes of reality
which, though not energy, do definitely condition the world
of energetic reactions. Such an attribute for example we have
found pure space to be with its condition of distance. We have
exaggerated the importance of causal or quantitative determina-
tions. We are familiar in human experience with other types
of determination, logical, ethical, and aesthetic, which are more
fundamental for human relations. The brute force of an in-
dividual or a group is less essential to social survival than
teleological fitness, the capacity for organization. And in
the cosmic process, in the large, formal determination may be
more essential to the survival of structures than brute quantity.
But if form is not a cause, how can it make a difference to our
world of process? We may find hints in our own social evolu-
tion of how form may become efficacious. It is not the vocifer-
ousness of the argument or the quantitative mass of the art
work that makes them prevail in our human experience. What
makes them win us over and determine our conduct and appre-
ciation is that they fit into the formal requirements of our
mental constitution and bring this into clearer relief. The
survival of man, or at least his standing in organized society,
consists in adopting or imitating certain forms, certain types
of conduct — conventional, legal, ethical, religious, etc. The
forms as such have no causal efficacy. Their efficacy comes
from their coerciveness upon the will of the group. In imitating
them, the member of the group survives, so far as the special
demands of that group are concerned. A whole group, again,
may be destroyed by another group which has a superior or-
ganization. Form thus figures as an aspect of efficient action,
though it is not as an abstraction efficacious. We strive for
it because it is implied in our structure.

While it is not necessary that the producer, be he artist,

FORM AND THE OUGHT 353

scientist, or reformer, be explicitly conscious of form, yet the
critic in examining his work can see that such formal demands
are realized. The creative result is approved, whether by
contemporaries or by posterity, not because of the mechanical
tools employed or the psychological attitude of the particular
producer or spectator, but because they conform to the formal
postulates, which the producer imitated or brought to expression.
We do not ask : Was the producer conscious of the form ?
We only ask : Does the result conform ? The formal survival
has to do, not with the method of production, but with the
acceptability of the unities produced. If they fail to get the
approval of the race, they may perhaps survive as raw material
for fresh attempts, as Ibsen's button molder proposes to melt
up worthless human life in his ladle, but they cannot persist
as formal unities, whether science, art, or social institutions.

If there is in the universe a perfect Socius, an omniscient
selective activity, with power commensurate with his formal
demands, then we can see how in nature and the universe at
large, as well as in race history, form can be a category of sur-
vival. As forms, only those unities would survive, in the long
run of his patience, which he approves. Such a being would
guarantee that universal efficacy of form in the cosmos which
we implicitly postulate. Thus the universe, while, in the
concrete and actual, it cannot be said to be a whole, would be
guaranteed potentially as a whole, or at any rate wholes would
be guaranteed within it ; for only certain organizations of
energy would prevail as acceptable. The values which we
imply in all our idealizing activity, logical, aesthetic, ethical,
could be potentially or virtually guaranteed even now, for only
those structures which imitate, or are in the direction of, this
selective activity would survive.

Whatever may be the coerciveness of such a faith, it is a fact
that cannot be gainsaid that architecture or form must be taken
account of as a condition of stability or instability in the world
as we know it. In the case of chemical compounds, some pro-
portions of elements are stable, some are unstable. Hydrogen
and oxygen have a high degree of stability in the combining
relation of water, while in other proportions they enter into the
most unstable of compounds. The difference here is not in the

354 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

elements themselves, but in the numerical ratio, which, therefore,
must be regarded as a factor. Even more striking is nature's
respect for architecture in the case of organic structures.
Mendel's law shows how jealous nature is of the preservation
of the type. Cross-breeding of types either leads to sterility,
where the types constitute remote species ; or where they are
less variant, leads to segregation of the original characters thus
blended and the reestablishing of the original types. Thus
nature enforces a certain simplicity of form where otherwise
would exist endless chaos. The same tendency might be illus-
trated in the history of ideal activity, as in the aesthetic and
institutional structures of the race, where again definite types
tend to prevail, giving direction to what would otherwise be
promiscuous individual variations.

The world of change and external contiguity can to a degree,
even in our finite selective activity, be taken up into contexts
of meaning and validity. This process of taking over the
brute world, with its mechanical uniformities, is going on in
science, art, and institutions with their selective survival
conditions, however limited may be the results. That such a
selection is a fact, a normal fact of the functioning of the
universe, and that it points to a formal constitution of which
we must become conscious and which individual insight must
seize upon, if it would be immortal, we also realize from human
experience. No human convention can make a poem or a
painting immortal. It must be such intrinsically by antici-
pating the universal, which social and individual experience
alike must acknowledge. It must be true to a form which
eternally exists, unmoved by change, in order to constitute worth
and eternity within change. Such a constitution must have
been ever operative, or it could not be operative now. As
formal selection is genuinely effective in the case of one part of
reality, it cannot be an accident, but must be regarded as an
expression of the universe. And why should we suppose that
the form waits on human wills alone for being operative? Is
it not easier to suppose that somehow this formal selection is
always going on in the cosmos, subjecting the thing-order to
the order of ideals, and that our acknowledgment and our
significant activity is prepared for and a part of this cosmic

FORM AND THE OUGHT 355

selection? Why should we not trust our faith in the formal
categories as we trust our faith in the mechanical?

The One and The Many

The perennial problem of the one and the many finds its
only intelligible solution in the recognition of such a direction.
The dialectic as to whether the universe is really one, and the
many an illusion — or whether it is really many, and the unity
an illusion — has been waged long, though usually with blood-
less damage to both sides. The atomists of all types, whether
believers in the quantitative entities of Democritus, or in the
spiritual monads of Leibniz or the qualities of Herbart, have
found it necessary to account for the apparent unity as arbi-
trary and seeming. The monists again, from Parmenides down,
have been equally forced to sacrifice the apparent plurality
within the world. Brave souls who have had more respect for
the facts than for logical consistency have compromised and
admitted both the one and the many with varying emphasis
according to their peculiar bias. One thing is certain, that
on the basis of a static conception of the world, the problem of
the one and the many remains as impossible as ever.

Nor is a dynamic conception of the world by itself any more
satisfactory. That the universe is process or transformation
does not tell us anything about its relative unity or plurality.
Process in itself may mean greater chaos as well as greater unity.
It furnishes no guaranty one way or the other. It tells us
nothing in so far as it is a mere time process about its whither.
Still we insist that our world shall be a whole and not a mere
chaos. This is the eternal inspiration of scientific research
as well as of practical life. Yet how ridiculously meager is
the evidence for our faith. Kleinpeter tells us that his master,
Mach, proceeds inductively as regards this unity, while
philosophy proceeds deductively. Have the fair maiden's
dreams of love, and her golden hair flying in the breeze, and the
prairie zephyrs all been comprehended within one inductive
unity? That they ever will be so is an audacious dream.

We are agreeing now that if there is to be unity it must
be a teleological unity. The dust storm can be understood
as one with love's fair dream only when they can be seen as

356 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

part of one converging purpose. Plato felt his way toward
such a teleological unity when he crowned his hierarchy of
Ideas with the Idea of the Good. But the dynamic cement
of process was lacking, and the loose stones would not hold
together. If we assume the attribute of direction, it seems to
me we shall have the necessary regulative principle. Granting,
on the one hand, a universe of flux with ever new variations,
and, on the other, an objective form, selective or legislative to
this flux, in eliminating those transmutations which do not fit
its direction — granting this not only as an experiential, but
as a cosmic principle, and a degree of unity at any one time
would be guaranteed, and in the long run, the successive stages
of the process would show cumulative significance, with a
backward and a forward reference. Such a universe, too, with
its original diversity of stuff to be transformed, with the possi-
bility of ever fresh variations, not precluded by such unifor-
mity as exists in the transmutations — such a universe would
also account for the outstanding plurality and opaqueness
in any given stage of the process. And as the process, more-
over, is as eternal as the direction, the pluralism could not
disappear, though it might grow more articulate here and there,
and so make disjunctive judgments of the future more possible.
The conception of immortality as the persistence of individual
unity, can be given real meaning only if we assume the attribute
of direction. Mere existence, and the tendency to persist in
esse suo cannot guarantee immortality. The question is not,
does an individual desire to persist ? Or does he have a specific
content? But is he worthy to persist? Is the content sig-
nificant? In the history of art and institutions, as well as in
the history of thought, we learn that only those structures and
contents which fit into the future of the process can survive.
But if worth is to be a condition of survival, the process must
be fundamentally selective. It must have direction.

The Ought

We may define the Ought as the consciousness of the form-
character of the universe. As the chord in music has its form ;
and as each movement of the symphony, as well as the sym-
phony as a whole, has its form, so we may think of the total

FORM AND THE OUGHT 357

movement of cosmic evolution as having its unique form, giving
direction and unity in the large, to its totality of interlocking
parts. It is the law of the whole of which we finite parts be-
come gradually conscious in our ideal activity, as we strive
to understand and to appreciate the world of which we are the
more or less articulate expression. In our imperfect finite
development, this law of the whole, as striven for by our will,
must necessarily appear as an Ought.

For purely theoretical purposes, a constitution which should
select automatically and unconsciously on the basis of form,
might satisfy our requirements. That such cosmic selection
is going on, is shown by the very fact that reason is at home
in the world, and that laws can be formulated in a world of
flux. For ethical and religious purposes, however, we seem to
require more than an automatic constitution. We need the
sense of comradeship, the sympathetic participation by the
larger world in our fleeting and disproportionate striving. We
need to feel, not only that the universe enforces an impersonal
order, but that, somehow, a power greater than ourselves,
and representing the more of our best, helps us to realize our
creative destiny.1 Just because reality is characterized by
change, and is in some degree plastic, it becomes possible con-
sciously so to direct this transformation, whether as regards
our individual or our collective lives, as to meliorate the past,
and atone in part for its failures. And because the process is
cumulative, and our imperfect efforts must enter into the
creative process of the future, and there find their correction
and supplementation, it becomes possible to approximate
in the historic process towards a more perfectly realized form.
This, moreover, our religious faith makes real to us as a present
companionship with a perfect Socius, stimulating our best and
atoning in some measure, through its regenerative influence,
for our worst. Such a being makes real and concrete to our
imagination and emotion the objectivity of the Ought.

The faith in such a selective process furnishes a sufficient
guarantee for our ideal striving. This is not a mere Utopian
or laissez faire optimism. There is real evil in the world, real
maladjustments, false viewpoints. But though the wicked

1 See "The Function of Religion," the Biblical World, August, 1915.

358 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

flourish like a green bay tree, their type shall not prevail.
The servant of Jehovah shall eventually triumph, though per-
haps through labor and suffering. The righteous remnant
shall survive and inherit the kingdom. Only the just state can
maintain itself. And because the mills of the gods grind
exceeding fine, though perhaps slowly, we can afford to be
tolerant, and to wait. "Let the tares grow with the wheat
until the harvest." And the harvest is the sifting by the pro-
gressive process itself. In view of our ignorance of the future,
our motto, just as far as our decent living together permits,
should be : Judge not. Let it be. The divine direction of
history will see to it, in the struggle of ideals, that the superficial
and ephemeral are eliminated. Thus man can labor and wait with
confidence as regards the final outcome. And if he is made of
the right kind of stuff, he will be willing to have his own ideals,
yea, even himself, eliminated if unworthy to survive. In this
willingness, at least, he will prove his superiority to chance.

Will the kingdom-not-of-this-world and the kingdom-of-
this- world ever be one; will stuff and form, the traveler and
the path, ever blend into one unity? Will the third kingdom,
prophesied by Ibsen in his "Emperor and Galilean," the
kingdom of God-Caesar or Caesar-God, ever be a finished
actuality? Not while the world is process. So long as there
are transformations, so long must the mills of the gods grind,
and so long will the content and meaning of the world be ever
new. No, to make circumstance plastic in the service of the
Ought is the task and the joy, too, of life, at least of healthy
life. The real other, the completer life, is not an absolute
system of truth which we now possess and intentionally hide
for the purposes of the dialectic game; but the yet unborn,
the insight we have not seen. Any theory which ignores this
must make history and duty a mere farce. The universe is
process, but through the process the selective direction sets the
conditions of survival and meaning.

There will always be tired souls, who want rest above all
other things ; but this must be a rest which the world cannot
give, a rest in seeking and realizing the ideal. The satisfaction
we now seek may itself, in a further stage of the process, be seen
to be relative and unworthy. To stop at that would be lazy,

FORM AND THE OUGHT 359

cowardly, and immoral. The real satisfaction lies ever beyond
in the completer life. Art tries to steal from the fleeting
moments their meaning, and to frame it; and it rests us for
a moment. But this satisfaction, too, is relative. The songs of
our childhood satisfy our soul no more. The satisfaction of the
Greek world is not our satisfaction.

The only way, finally, which I can serve the eternal Ought
is by serving for the time being the Ought incarnated in my
meaning and in human history. To quote Heraclitus again,
"It is not meet to act and speak like men asleep." We are
here to think and to create. Whether we are awake or asleep,
whether we think or dream away life, we are subject to the law
of change and the law of direction. But if we think, we may
enter into the eternal in some degree by striving to understand
the direction of things, and by guiding our lives accordingly;
we may become creators instead of mere bubbles on the stream.
By acting out my best purposes, by living my highest insight,
there shall come, perhaps through failure, perhaps through
partial success, how I do not know, new insight, new capacity
for work, love, and appreciation. The guiding power of the
universe will see to it, if we are sincere, that we do not per-
manently miss the course in the foggy unknown. But our
illumination must be the Ought as now incarnated in human
history. The next incarnation will come in the fullness of
time. The voice out of the dark is enough for the next step.

CHAPTER XVIII

TELEOLOGICAL IDEALISM

THE question about the whence and whither of the drift of
our cosmic weather is an old one and cannot be lightly brushed
aside. It is both a forced and a momentous issue. It is a
forced issue because we cannot help taking an attitude towards
it, whether we make it explicit to ourselves or not. It is momen-
tous because such an attitude is a serious index of our deepest
practical faith as regards the value of life, and cannot help
determining our conduct. There have been three distinct
types of theory in the past as regards this drift, — mechanism,
finalism and vitalism.

I. Theories of Evolution

Mechanism. — In considering mechanism we must be care-
ful not to be misled by the name, which is after all but a figure
of speech. The view of the scientific naturalist of to-day has
little in common with the mechanical theory of the eighteenth
century. His interest, as must always be the case with science,
is in efficient causes, and in so far he is not committed to
any special type of metaphysics. He is but trying to discover
the determining factors in the series of dynamic situations
that occur in experience. As regards the constitution of these
situations he is not necessarily an abstract atomist. It is
true that the atomic hypothesis in chemistry and Mendel's
theory of unit characters in biology have proved highly con-
venient in studying chemical and biological processes, but
recent scientific research has shown that such an atomism, if
taken in the abstract, breaks down. The Mendelian units,
for example, are not effective as abstract elements. They figure
within dynamic situations which they enable us to predict.
Sometimes two unit characters may figure as one for the pur-
pose of prediction. In any case we must take account of the

360

TELEOLOGICAL IDEALISM 361

dynamic context in order to have satisfactory explanation. This
is equally true of other biological abstractions, such as sex
determinants. They are only efficient in the situations in
which they figure and which we cannot afford to ignore. The
mechanical view, in the science of the present day, amounts to
this, that in the case of life as well as in the inorganic world
we must examine the chemical constitution of the process. We
must analyze the dynamic situation into its chemical factors
and their positional values. The effects of the presence or
absence of these factors must be discovered, their quantitative
variations in the situations under experimental control must
be studied, and the effects of external conditions noted. There
is no metaphysical short cut to an understanding of the pro-
cess of life, any more than to an understanding of other dynamic
processes.

As for the unique chemical compounds which pertain to
living organisms, natural science, accepting them as facts, as it
accepts other actual compounds, is inclined to assume conti-
nuity as between the organic and the inorganic, and to reduce
the difference to one of complexity. The chemist's success
in artificially producing "organic" substances in the laboratory,
— a success which has been ever increasing since the organic
compound of urea was artificially produced a century or more
ago — has stimulated the naturalist to believe that it may
hereafter be possible to produce living organisms out of what
we call inorganic elements, or at any rate our failure to do so
in the past may be due to our ignorance and not to any inherent
absurdity in the idea.

Now if the attitude of mechanism be understood in this
naturalistic sense, nothing can be said against its procedure.
Its results in successsful prediction have been truly marvel-
ous, considering the short time for which the method has been
seriously tried. The revising of special hypotheses must be
dictated by the facts, not by any a priori objections. Thus it
is now generally recognized that the Darwinian hypothesis of
natural selection, epoch making as it was and useful as it still
is, is only a partial account of the facts. Natural selection is a
negative factor in evolution. As Driesch puts it, to regard
natural selection "as a positive factor in descent would be to

362 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

confound the sufficient reason for the non-existence of what is
not with the sufficient reason of what is." The positive ground
for variation and continuity must be found within the process.

The only question that can be raised as to the mechanistic
hypothesis is whether it is adequate as an ultimate philosophy.
Can this external and seemingly blind dynamism account for
the direction of the process, and for the outcome as we find it
in the higher stages of life ? Can we read the whole history of
the universe solely in terms of the categories which have proven
so convenient on the simpler levels of existence ? The postulate
of continuity should apply, it would seem, as well when read
from above down as when read from below up. And, after all,
we have a much more intimate knowledge of processes and their
implications in the highest stages, of which our will and ideals
are a part, than we can ever possess of the dynamism of the
lower stages of nature. In the former case we have a first-hand
acquaintance with the inner transitions and unities ; in the latter
we are at best outside and speculative spectators.

Finalism. — Finalism, as opposed to mechanism, has always
taken the point of view that we must judge evolution by its out-
come, its last stages. We know the potentialities of the acorn
when we have seen it grow up as the oak, of the child when its
capacities are displayed in the grown man. So we must know
nature by its outcome in our striving for ideals. Under the theory
of mechanism, the process is accounted for by the factors dis-
coverable in the previous stage of the sequence, together with
the external conditions which play upon them ; for finalism the
causality lies in the future, in the prospective value of the
process.

For working out this view we must go back to Plato and
Aristotle as models. In opposition to the naturalistic method
of their day, they insisted that evolution must be explained
by its purpose, the Idea, or form, to which it tends. The two
Greek thinkers differ somewhat in details, but Plato must be
regarded as the original master of this type of view.

For Plato the world of sense, the existence of which he does
not deny, is a poor effort to copy a world of eternal Ideas.
These alone are real. On this theory of a copy, Plato is driven
to assume that there are as many Ideas not only as there are

TELEOLOGICAL IDEALISM 363

ideals and class types, but as there are individuals and types
of relations. This forces him eventually to regard mathematics
as the type of the real, since only here can he find ideal possibili-
ties adequate to the originals of the distorted shadows which
make up the phenomenal world. With this phenomenal world
Plato manifests a poetic impatience. He would not trouble
himself so much with the mechanism of movement, so im-
portant to Aristotle. He would go directly to the end, which
is the Good. Aristotle, while he largely copies his master,
places more confidence in the world of actual process, in the
potentialities of matter. The concrete process is the first
reality. But this process finds its explanation in the conception
of a goal, its final cause. Here shows the artistic consciousness
of the Greek ; life and nature, too, work as the artist. In either
of these views the end is conceived as the moving cause. "It
is the conception of a thing which produces motion alike in works
of nature and of art. Only man can beget man. Only the
conception of health can determine the physician in producing
health. In like manner we shall find in the highest cause which
is God, the pure form, the ultimate end of the world and the
source of its movement united in one." l

But obviously the end cannot be conceived to be consciously
present in the case of the lower processes. How can they then
develop in the direction of their characteristic activities? In
other words, how can the form be effective? Since God is
the goal and the final cause of the movement of the universe,
how does God act upon the world? Here Aristotle wavers
between two methods. He sometimes speaks in quite mechani-
cal terms. God gives a push from without to the outer circle
of the universe, and thus makes it move. But the more char-
acteristic method of Aristotle is to look upon God as self-con-
tained activity and bliss, moving the world by his perfection.
The beloved does not need to do anything to the lover ; for the
lover is moved by the beauty of the beloved. So the universe
moves because it desires perfection.2 This perfection, more-

1 Quoted from Zeller, " Aristotle," Vol. I, pp. 356, 357.

* In Zeller's paraphrase of Aristotle : " God moves the world in this way :
The object of desire and the object of thought cause motion without moving
themselves. But these motive forces are ultimately the same (the absolute
object of thought is the absolutely desirable, or pure good) ; for the object of

364 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

over, is different for different classes; vegetable, animal, or
human, each moves to realize its own proper function, its
characteristic soul.

Hence, it is necessary, in order to explain the diversity of the
process, to assume in addition to God a multiplicity of forms, —
entelechies, or conceptions. Just what relation these bear to
the final form, God, Aristotle does not tell us ; he takes them
for granted from experience. His faith in the concrete process,
however, gives him the advantage that he can regard the pro-
cess itself as really moving, and also that he can make this
concrete process bear part of the responsibility. Thus the
individuality of the process is due not to its form but to its
matter. Hence, forms are genera, not particulars. Here,
again, his solution of the problem is tantalizingly vague. And,
naturally, he has little to say about immortality, that is, the
final significance of the individual.

A more serious question is why" the process should desire
the form. What relation do the conceptions, or entelechies,
bear to the process itself ? If they did not exist as second reali-
ties, would it make any difference to the process? Would not
the process move by its own immanent tendency? In that
case the conceptions, serving as final causes, would seem to be
after-thoughts. But Aristotle is too anthropomorphic to be
troubled by such questions ; for him to the end it is the con-
ceptions which move matter, although "only the master workers
know the reason why. Manual workers, like lifeless things,
work by habit."

That there is truth in the finalist's contention we shall find
abundant reason to see. But the solution suggested by Plato
and Aristotle is far too easy and abstract. A biologist of the
present day, Driesch,1 has attempted to give Aristotle's view
a more modern and scientific statement. Driesch insists that

desire is apparent beauty, while the original object of will is real beauty, but
desire is conditioned by the notion (of the value of the object) and not vice versa.
Thought, therefore, is the starting point or principle. Thought, however, is
set in motion by the object of the thought ; but only one of the two series is
absolutely intelligible, and in this Being stands first defined as simple and actual."
Meta. XII, 7, 1072, a, 26. " The final cause operates like a loved object, and
that which is moved by it communicates motion to the rest." Meta. 1072, 6, 3.
1 "Philosophy of the Organism" (Macmillan).

TELEOLOGICAL IDEALISM 365

we cannot account for the prospective value of the parts of
protoplasm, as shown especially in restitution and heredity,
unless we introduce entelechies. "An entelechy means the
faculty of achieving 'forma essentialis.'" Now these entele-
chies, while figuring in the process, are not on the one hand
psychological entities, nor on the other are they energies. They
can, however, be best understood from psychological analogies.
They are selective. They perform functions which resemble
judging and liking, willing and thinking. Yet, while they are
not energies, they can under certain conditions suspend the
energetic reactions ; and they have a regulative function in
the process. But while Driesch's attempt to get away from the
anthropomorphism of Aristotle is commendable, it must be
said that Aristotle's final causes are at least intelligible, being
drawn from our experience of certain processes where they do
hold. Valuable as is Driesch's empirical work, his entelechies
seem to have no meaning at all; they are merely duplicates
of the selective and prospective tendencies of the process.
Moreover, such a selective function is by no means limited to
the organic realm ; we find it, though with less complicated
working, in the chemical affinities. In any case, it is hard to
see what we have gained by hypostasizing such tendencies
and giving them a Greek name.

Vitalism. — Mechanism and classical finalism deal with
partial aspects of the process. Vitalism attempts to find a
common denominator for the process as a whole.

Bergson 1 and others have pointed out with great clearness
that the correlative growth of organs and functions in organic
life, for example in the eye, could not be accounted for by mere
accidental variations and natural selection. If in any one
part such variations were considerable and abrupt, as in the
case of mutations, they would only interfere the more with the
functioning of the organ. If they were small they might not
interfere, but they would have to accumulate through ages,
and correlative changes in this and other organs would have to
take place, so as to produce harmonious adjustment or adaptive
functioning. This is almost impossible to conceive on the basis
of chance.

1 "Creative Evolution" (Henry Holt & Co.).

366 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

So with the different directions in which evolution has pro-
ceeded. These directions must be implied in the process, even
though we can only read them backwards, as at sea we read
the direction of the ship's movement from the silver wake where
we have passed.

As between mechanism and intellectual finalism, Bergson
suggests the middle ground of vital impulse, in which is im-
plied the complexity that afterwards appears, when evolution
splits up in the struggle with the environment, as the potential
effects of the skyrocket appear when it bursts in the air. The
most important of these tendencies are the split of life into
the vegetable and animal, and the dissociation of mind into
instinct and intelligence. Evolution is division. In the divi-
sion, however, there remains a suggestion of the other side;
some common characters, however secondary, abide. Plant
life carries a blend of the animal; intelligence a blend of in-
stinct. The progress and continuity of the process in either
case are to be accounted for by the push from behind of the
common vital impulse.

Whether this vital impulse, as a distinct determinant in the
evolution of life, must be added to the chemical determinants
with which naturalism deals, must be decided by scientific
evidence. Once admit creative evolution in general, and recog-
nize in particular that every compound must be regarded as
a creative result, possessing a new and unique set of reactions
and not a mere addition of the characters of the separately known
elements which enter into it, — and the conceptual difficulty
disappears. Whether, as externally viewed, life itself can be
regarded as a compound, or whether to produce life some new
factor must be supposed to have been added from without,
must be decided upon evidence. At present the difficulties of
conceiving that life was introduced from outside into our planet
seem at least as great as those of the theory that it arose from
certain antecedent conditions on our planet. In any case, we
are dealing essentially with mechanism. Vital impulse, as
pictured by Bergson, is no less blind than the elements of
chemistry. Its structure, in order to account for all the diver-
sity of life, must be no less atomic than science has pictured
the physical structure to be. Moreover, synthesis would

TELEOLOGICAL IDEALISM 367

seem to be as characteristic of evolution as division ; and if so,
why may not life itself be regarded as a new synthesis, under
specific conditions, in the creative process?

The trouble with the hypothesis of vital impulse is that, like
any conception that tries to explain everything, it explains noth-
ing. We still have the diversity of the process, with its direc-
tion, to account for. To say that what does happen can hap-
pen, is self-evident, and that is all that vitalism tells us. In
trying to explain everything from below, the higher from the
more primitive, it is pragmatically indistinguishable from the
naturalistic mechanism which it condemns. The latter at
least furnishes the only empirically fruitful method of investi-
gating the apparent sequences of life. To account, further,
for the direction or meaning of the process, we must have some-
thing besides a blind vis a tergo. What this means we must
presently see more in detail.

It is at least infinitely improbable that mere chance, or mere
external conjunction, whether in terms of vitalism or of chemical
mechanism, should have accomplished the results of organiza-
tion, with the compensatory adjustments involved in the evolu-
tion of life and mind. There must be some continuity which
enables us to read down from the higher as well as to read up
from the lower.

It is also unlikely that all life is a compound having the poten-
tiality of the development of the higher forms with their awaken-
ing ideals. It is easier to suppose that life, as Maxwell supposes
in regard to matter, has its omniscient sorting demon who
interpenetrates and selects in accordance with certain standards.
In other words, the natural order must be thought of as inter-
penetrated by an intelligent order. Aristotle's failure to make
form (in the sense of ideal conceptions) effective, and his re-
course to mechanical push to move the universe, should show
us that form, in order to be efficient, must dip into the dynamic
process itself, whether in a personal or impersonal way. In the
plastic responsiveness of the natural order to this, the unseen
order, would in that case lie its capacity for progress. This
plasticity becomes more and more apparent in the higher orders
of life with their vast complexity of possibilities and their
organization for action. The nervous system is peculiarly the

368 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

type of plastic responsiveness both to the unseen order which
overarches and permeates and to the sense-order which es-
tablishes the immediate conditions of survival.

II. A New Teleology Suggested

We have little sympathy to-day with Plato's "heavenly pat-
tern" and Aristotle's "final causes," that is, with ideal con-
ceptions as determining existence and survival. We are apt
to think of the process of evolution as blindly accomplishing
its course as a result of internal and external accidents. At
best, some would say, it is only in retrospect that nature finds
that some ways of doing things seem good and so strives to
preserve them. Mind itself, with its ideals, some have come
to treat in this retrospective way. And any emphasis on ideals
has been promptly treated as an hypostasis of our own ab-
stractions. Chance variation is regarded as the mother of mind
and form, ideals are but indications of the drift, not its rationale.

Even on this materialistic view, some use may be found for
the "final form" of Aristotle. It represents, at any rate, the
way we look back upon the series after its conclusion. Ideals
and types, as our measures, form a posteriori a convenient in-
xstrument for viewing the flux, and furnish a certain subjective
satisfaction. But can we stop here? Is the type, the "final
form," a mere result of accident? Could the direction of the
organic process, or of social ideals, have been the opposite, if
accident so decreed? Is there no objective way of reading the
series? Does it appear as it does, simply because we happen
to be at this end of it? And when life repeats itself, with
seemingly new efforts to reproduce a type, is this sufficiently
accounted for by accident? Could thought have been con-
stituted entirely otherwise ? Is the whole story of life, from the
chaotic protoplasm from which it started to the striving for
truth and beauty, all a matter of blind variations, operated on
by a blind environment?

However fully such a picture may do justice to our ignorance,
it yet does not satisfy our reason. From the point of view of
reason it is easier to read nature as striving to express certain
types or ideals than to read ideals as chance. Nature seems
to be, somehow, leading in the direction of human nature ; the

TELEOLOGICAL IDEALISM 369

striving for a type somehow to be determining the direction of
the series; and freedom and significant expression of life to
be all the time the end to be realized.

I admit the difficulty of making this clear. But as a faith
it ought to have, at any rate, the same opportunity as the
materialistic faith in blind chance. If in our ignorance it
makes the transitions of the facts easier for us, that gives it a
pragmatic advantage over the more shocking rival faith. And
I must confess that to me the culmination of a process in the
appreciation of truth and beauty is more reasonably accounted
for in a universe which has a fundamental formal character,
and as such is selective, than in a universe in which this ideali-
zation is an accident. On such reasonableness we may finally
have to rest our mode of understanding the significance of
evolution. Some may call this a mere temperamental prefer-
ence. In that case the temperament remains to be accounted
for. To me this seems a fundamental demand for coherency
and unity, while chance, formless happening, is fundamentally
irrational — an apotheosis of our ignorance of the modus
operandi of nature.

Whether the final cause operates through the inner striving
of the process for its type, its final realization, or whether the
efficiency of the final cause means the operation in the universe
of an ideal will, after the analogy of the artist, interpenetrating
our finite world of process, selecting and rejecting with reference
to the realization of the type, — star type or man type, — must
again be decided by our experience, fragmentary as this is.
Different ages and minds find one or the other of these attitudes
more congenial. In any case the form would in some sense pre-
exist in the process ; and in any case evolution would mean the
differentiation of the organs for the proper realization of this
form and, in man at least, for the significant sharing of it.

Mechanism, while true so far as it goes, is at best only an
account of the physical conditions of heredity. Heredity does
not mean merely the passing over of protoplasmic and chromo-
some potentials. It means also the arising of a unique cona-
tive disposition, through the impulse of generation. It is
this which furnishes the architectonic principle of the develop-
ing life process. The chemical situation must be looked upon

370 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

as the vehicle or instrument of this process. Heredity must
be understood not merely as a physical stream, but also as
a psychic stream, with its variations, its cumulation, and its
characteristic categories.

The final theory of evolution must include both mechanism
and finalism. For the time being, in predicting and controlling
the process, we must work by efficient causes. Science has no
choice in this matter. On the other hand, we must admit that
the ideal selection of the later stages has some continuity with
the earlier stages. When we try to read the process in the
large, at any rate, we must somehow recognize the direction
within it. We may choose to ignore the final reason of things,
and limit ourselves to the description of sequences, but it
nevertheless remains true that in part of the process formal
selection is a reality, and no fair account can be given of evolu-
tion without recognizing this part and its relation to the whole.
Invariable sequence, habit, recapitulation, and other external
forms of linkage are but names for the facts. They merely
indicate that facts do repeat themselves ; they are not explana-
tions. In some way the formal categories, of which we become
conscious in human nature, must reveal to us the tendencies of
nature ; in some way the blossom on the tree of evolution must
be indicative of the process which brought it into existence.
The universe must be such as to account for the ideals which
are a part of our experience, as well as for the externality and
blindness which we find. As man in his small way, by his
selection and emphasis of certain types of universe, is creative,
so we must suppose that the process of which he is a part and
which awakens to reflection in him is likewise creative. This
need not mean that the later stages are present bodily in the
earlier, or that the earlier stages work by "conceptions," but
it means that somehow the categories which the later idealizing
process brings to bear upon the earlier in our idealization of
them are germane to these earlier and not accidental.

Of the two conceptions, the mechanistic and the teleological,
the latter is the one that overlaps. By means of laws that are
familiar to us in the later purposive stages we can account
for the automatism, the mechanism, the seeming deadness of
the world. By means of mechanism we cannot account for

TELEOLOGICAL IDEALISM 371

the seeming plasticity and value in parts of the process, at
least not without falling back upon the miraculous, and so
doing violence to our original concept. If we deny the reality
of mind and ideals, we cannot account for the sense of promise
of the world and of its openness toward the future, however
convenient the conception of mechanism may be in epitomiz-
ing the past. In some way we must recognize emphasis and
preferential selection, for human nature is part of nature.

That a universe should tend to realize a certain form is no
more mysterious than that animals should turn toward or
away from the light, or that the elements should attract or
repel each other. In any case, in the last analysis, we must
fall back upon the constitution of reality as discovered in
experience, and regard that as reasonable which works out.
That a possibility of reasonableness should exist in a world
which evolves reason, seems certainly a reasonable demand.

It is the naturalistic materialist who has violated the principle
of continuity in nature by cutting the higher stages of the pro-
cess loose from the earlier. Why the materialist, who is always
emphasizing continuity, should turn round when it comes to
human nature and its ideals, and here insist upon discontinuity,
a complete break, absolute irrelevance to what precedes, can
be explained only as the result of prejudice. He had rather
make any sacrifice than give up his faith in the adequacy of the
mechanical method of reading the facts. If we would be fair,
must we not insist that human nature, with the ideals which
it brings to light, reveals truly and fundamentally the drift
of nature? If we make nature responsible for evolution, then
we must at any rate give nature full credit. We must keep in
mind that thought, right, and beauty are as much expressions
of nature as is the law of falling bodies. The whole history
of evolution, including institutions, science, and art, must be
somehow prefigured in the nature of the universe as a whole.
The after-form which we read in retrospect must somehow be
foreshadowed in the process which terminates in it and which
makes such reading possible. Consciousness but reveals, it
does not make the categories which guide mind in its higher
activity.

Thus both the mechanical and the teleological categories

372 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

must run through the various stages of evolution, however
different their concrete richness and significance become with
the varying complexity of the process. And this may be true
irrespective of the stuff in which these categories express them-
selves. We have material mechanism and spiritual mechanism ;
and why not material teleology as well as spiritual teleology, —
just as the genius of the artist may express his meaning in
marble, on canvas, in tones, or by means of words ? The body
is different, the limitations which the material sets are different,
but the ideal laws are the same.

If we take even the categories of mechanism, we are most
familiar with those which are expressed in terms of our own
mental life, for memory and habit are categories of mechanism.
As in the mechanical categories we can trace the identity be-
tween the higher processes of memory association and the
lower processes of perceptual habit and automatic activities,
so we can trace the identity of the categories of external mental
coherence with the categories of external coherence in the non-
conscious world. Whether we use the term habit or some other
term to indicate this universality of mechanism is a matter of
convenience. If we cannot surely say, with C. S. Peirce, that
matter is "mind hide-bound with habit," we can say that mech-
anism, in the sense of external determination, overlaps mind
and matter, and has essentially the same categories in each.

On the analogy of memory, or rather by the use of categories
which we must regard as identical and which are applicable
both to the mechanism of memory and to the simpler forms
of mechanism, we can account for, or at any rate throw light
upon, processes which at first seem mysterious enough. In the
case of memory, each part has by its position a certain function
whereby it brings into the field of consciousness certain other
parts. In other words, the memory mechanism is a constella-
tion of mutually determining parts, each able to restore other
parts within the cluster. The mechanism is not absolute ; there
are minor fluctuations even in reproductive imagination ; while
the situations are sufficiently identical for recognition with its
feeling of familiarity, new details have been added, old details
dropped out, and the tone of the situation may be greatly
changed. In practical life we pass over these fluctuations as

TELEOLOGICAL IDEALISM 373

of no consequence to the process. In productive imagination,
on the other hand, new types of universals are brought to light,
which become permanent parts of our ideal activity.

In 'spite of the greater complexity of the process in the
higher stages and the consciousness which accompanies it
there, it is easy to see the fundamental identity of the operation
of nature here with those operations which we find in the
lower stages, such as heredity and the restitution (within greater
or smaller limits) of parts. In each of these cases we have
to do, whether in a material or a mental way, with the positional
value of a part within a constellation and its power to restore
its context, whether this context be the space context of a
pattern of parts, simultaneously and mutually supplementing
one another, or a time context, where the parts blend into one
' another and constitute a sequential whole, as in the stages in
the life of an organism or the movement of a melody. Some
writers have called this positional potentiality of parts, on the
level of unconscious life, organic memory. It is truer, however,
to regard memory as a highly specialized form of the more
universal tendency of reproduction of parts, with their fluctua-
tions or mutations.

Thus it seems that certain mechanical categories are common
to our minds and to the rest of reality. The preservation of a
type, the tendency of one part to restore the rest of its complex,
seem to be common to the mechanism of the ideal stage and
to that of lower activity. On the teleological side, too, we
have reason to believe that there must be similar identity, -
elementary formal categories running through the process as
a whole, whether inorganic, organic, or ideal selection, — not
limited to mind but present in some way, however unconscious,
in the lower stages. There seems to be a tendency toward
clearness and distinctness, toward economy in relationships.
That is why the fundamental postulate of simplicity has proved
so convenient both in our theoretical and practical adjustments
to our world.

That nature has, as it were, an aesthetic sense, that it operates
so as to produce clearness and distinctness, is shown throughout
its whole range of development. The inorganic world, as well
as the organic, seems to respond to our ideal demands for simple

374 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

formulations, for distinct types. Physical harmony follows
the simplest ratios, as was pointed out by Helmholtz. The
light rays move in straight lines, the chemical elements seem
to fall into a "natural series," with relations that can be mathe-
matically predicted. In the organic world nature likewise
demands clearness and distinctness; the protean fluctuations
fail to survive. Only the mutations, the distinct types, con-
tinue in heredity. Again, the mixture of species either gives
rise to no offspring or produces sterility ; or in the case of more
approximate species a final reversion to the original type takes
place in accordance with Mendel's law. Finally, in ideal
creativeness and psychological heredity clearness and distinct-
ness is the law. Here our conscious aim is to eliminate the
irrelevant and make the type, or universal, stand out. Only
the clear and distinct types succeed in becoming a permanent
part of individual memory and social history. The infinite
minor fluctuations come and go. We may therefore assume that
the law which nature manifests in its highest creativeness, and
of which we are aware in our ideal production, namely, the law
of clearness and distinctness, is identical with the law which
governs nature throughout its various stages, and that the
highest manifestations of this law differ from the lower primarily
in the freedom and spontaneity with which the law realizes
itself in the former. An immanent form in any case leads nature
onward. While the law becomes conscious in the higher stages,
it does not follow that it originates there. On the contrary, it
comes to our creative activity as a presupposition or command,
as the voice of the universe.

This demand for clearness and distinctness in nature is seen
even where there is mutation and instability. In a universal
process the demand for clearness and distinctness necessarily
presents an infinite problem. In the case of the radio-active
elements we seem to have such a case of mutation and instability
in the natural series of elements. In the organic series periods
of stability seem to alternate with periods of mutation. But
in each case the spontaneity of nature illustrates the law or
tendency which nature is ever striving to realize, and which is
shown all the more strikingly because in places the process is
still open and is striving for a new equilibrium.

TELEOLOGICAL IDEALISM 375

Science, therefore, even of the most naturalistic kind postu-
lates more than it knows, more than the blind mechanism with
which it professes to work. It posits by its own faith and
persistent effort, as it verifies by its success, that the universe
must lend itself to ideals of simplicity and unity, that those laws
which we discover for ourselves in the higher creative activities
are relevant to our world, in brief that in a large sense the uni-
verse is fundamentally teleological. For us thus to strive to
conquer the universe is part of the universe. The imperishable
faith on the part of this piece of animated clay that, in spite
of seeming defeat, it can yet make its demands prevail, that our
will can in a measure reconstruct a world which shall be clear
and distinct in its relationships in spite of seeming chaos, —
this faith is evidence of the voice of the universe, of its push
toward ideal realization. By virtue of this, "hope springs
eternal in the human breast." This faith is more fundamentally
pious than our short cuts by way of an anthropomorphic God.
The trouble with so much of our thinking both of the mechanical
and teleological type is that it has been truncated. It lacks
thoroughness.

Geometry, mathematical simplification, is but this faith in
clearness and distinctness reduced to its ultimate terms. It is
the idealizing process in the abstract, outstripping as it comes
to consciousness in us, its concrete limitations. And so form
appears as limit to our finite experience ; yet, when you bring
back this faith to our motley world, how convenient it proves,
how well our world lends itself to it, irrespective of variety of
stuff, so as to make it seem that the universe "geometrizes."
And in a deep sense it does; for both the seemingly opaque
world we strive to know and our thought are part and parcel
of one process ; in their formal presuppositions they are one.
Nature owns and molds mind into its own requirements. If
the process in the universe, from the stellar movements and the
minute relations in the structure of things to the harmonic
relations of music, seeks geometrical and arithmetical patterns,
this is not because our thinking regulates the process, but be-
cause in the laws of our thinking we discover the pure mani-
festations of the inherent form, not obscured by the concrete
transitions and changes of process.

376 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

That, again, our conceptualizing should prove approximate
is inevitable in a moving world. In such a world form must
ever manifest itself as tendency or direction, — as an ought.
Absolute our ideal formulations could only prove in a world
which had completely settled or encrusted itself. But such a
universe would be dead. Process, transmutation, creative-
ness, is of the nature of reality and must be accepted as such.
That nature is creative and not merely reproductive of ready-
made universals is shown both on the plane of the unconscious
origination of the lower levels of nature and on the plane of
ideal creativeness. Organically, nature is ever creating and
fixing new types ; and in our ideal constructions this is no less
true. If, on the organic level, nature is prodigal in her experi-
ment, she is no less prodigal on the ideal level. How few poems,
pictures, laws, practical plans, out of the myriads evolved,
answer the permanent ideal demands of the race !

If nature stands in relation to its processes as an artist
attempting to express a form — a form not foreign to itself
but its own implicit or explicit constitution — then we must
regard natural selection as part of the same activity, differing
only in the degree of conscious direction and significance. The
latter is itself a result of the demand for clearness and distinct-
ness of functioning on the part of nature. In natural selection
this formal demand realizes itself automatically in the flux of
process. Just as the stone rolls back again to the bottom unless
it reaches the top of the hill, so life tumbles back to the inchoate
plane from which it has tried to rise unless it reaches a clear and
distinct type. On the level of thought, however, where nature
is more or less clearly conscious of her aim, the process of so-
called "artificial" selection is far more economical and efficient.
Not only can ages of unconscious experimenting be fore-
shortened, but results of clearness and distinctness can be at-
tained which blind groping never could reach. And with it all,
there is added the consciousness of value with its infinite richness.

It is not a case of natural laws in the spiritual world or of
spiritual laws in the natural world, but of certain laws pre-
vailing throughout the process of the universe, expressing them-
selves in the limitations of each particular stage and stuff
in which they operate, just as the categories of art are funda-

TELEOLOGICAL IDEALISM 377

mentally the same whether the stuff be marble, tone, or the
body of language. What makes the law in each case clear is
the interpenetration of the same identical form. The various
energies are fundamentally run through with the same cate-
gories. It is a case of our reasonable reading of our world.

We are now in a position to sum up the internal conditions
governing the continuity of process. For the present purpose,
the elementary facts in the constitution of process may be
considered as three : (1) the fluency of process which makes
it overflow our abstract types, producing ever new fluctuations
and mutations; (2) the mechanical aspect of process which
makes its flow crystallize provisionally at least into certain
structures, making it possible to predict and control its flow;
(3) the formal requirements which condition the direction and
intelligibility of the process.

Two questions yet remain, namely, the character of this
formal constitution and the question of its effectiveness in our
world of process. Coming back to our first question, How do
forms preexist or what forms are presupposed? I do not
believe that it is necessary to assume an indefinite number of
forms as do Plato and Aristotle. True, Aristotle limited the
forms to class-forms and depended upon the concrete process to
differentiate these into individuals. I would make the formal
requirements still more general — the same for the process as
a whole. These formal requirements, as I have shown, can be
reduced in the last analysis to the demand for clearness and
distinctness as regards the transitions and relations within the
process. Variations, smaller or larger, are ever produced ; they
tend to crystallize — to be retained and to reproduce their
contents by virtue of the inherent mechanism of the process.
But they survive in the process, so far as internal conditions
are concerned, only if they fulfill the formal requirements of
clearness and distinctness. Neither the types nor the individ-
uals are predetermined as such. But when in the course of
the transmutations they do arise, they must, in order to survive,
obey certain formal laws — laws which are also fundamental
in our understanding and appreciation of our world.

Of course, besides the internal conditions of survival there
are the external conditions, which fix what types can survive

378 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

in the particular environment, simple or complex, low or high,
as it may be. But these can only eliminate, they cannot make
types permanent.

These external conditions cannot be conceived in merely
material terms. There is more than one level of environment.
If we take into account merely the simplest environment, the
micro-organisms are better adapted to it than we are. They
were here before us, and will remain for ages after the earth
becomes uninhabitable for the higher forms of life. Some of
them are adapted to withstand the temperature of liquid air.

There seem to be certain plateaus, levels, or crusts of life,
more or less rhythmically formed. These have their own unique
conditions for survival. In social life we have certain levels
in the way of custom and tradition ; then there comes a loosen-
ing of the crust and a period of agitation and rearrangement.
This in turn is followed by a new level of equilibrium with new
selective conditions for the individual. The same seems to
be true of life on the organic level. Here, too, periods of
stability of species are found to alternate with periods of muta-
tion. And thus new levels are reached with new external
conditions for survival.

As regards the effectivenes of form, Plato and Aristotle have
shown that in higher ideal realization it is not necessary that
the form itself should move in order to produce movement,
that is, that the form should possess energy. The beloved may
be indifferent to the lover. Beauty moves us by its perfection,
not by its sensuous body. What is true in the higher activities
may be true of the lower. Substituting energy or tendency
for love, we may say that energy seeks a geometrical or arith-
metrical pattern, seeks simplicity of relationships, though the
formal limits which it seeks do not act upon it. They are in
fact part of its constitution. The laws of logic do not act
upon the process of thought. They are implied in it. And
thought is but nature's reflection upon itself.

III. Matter and God

In closing, something must be said about the metaphysical
nature of the world in which form is realized. There has been
in recent times much sentimental inveighing against the mean-

TELEOLOGICAL IDEALISM 379

ness and blindness of matter. Now that depends primarily
upon definition. With some noble, rugged materialists the
conception of matter is decidedly thick — rich in possibilities.
Democritus, Hobbes, and Priestley deny nothing to matter
that could make the world plausible. They attribute to matter
all the pragmatic consequences with which experience makes
us acquainted, including mind and ideals. With Democritus,
while mind is reduced to fire-atoms, it loses nothing of its effi-
cacy and dignity on that account. For Hobbes, consciousness
itself is a property of matter and so not foreign to the world.
Priestley's materialistic hypothesis does not interfere with his
religious devoutness. The great prophets of Israel, who gave
us our fundamental ethical and religious ideals, thought of the
world, including the human soul, — "the breath" of man, —
in material terms. With all these, matter covers the whole
range of potentialities from inorganic nature to a deistic God.
Tyndall could not cease to marvel at the potentialities of
matter. When we should understand them, all would be clear.
With this thick conception of matter, teleological idealism
need not have any quarrel. Matter rises to any emergency
since the conception can be enlarged to meet the case. It
would be principally a question of convenience whether we
should use such a concept.

The tendency, however, has not been absent to narrow the
conception of matter to the anti-teleological, or mechanical,
interest, and thus to contrast matter with mind, — which
under such a view becomes a sort of miraculous accident.
Such a conception still leaves much to admire. The body with
its delicate adjustments and intricacies shows wondrous pos-
sibilities even when contrasted with mind. Even the pale no-
bility of the face of a dead friend challenges our reverence by
its wonderful expressiveness. The trouble with the mechanical
conception is not so much its ignobility as its narrowness — its
failure to take stock of all the facts, to furnish play for all the
possibilities of life.

If we use matter in this narrower sense, as opposed to mind,
what is the function of matter in the process of evolution?
Those who have attempted to give an account of the world in
terms of monistic idealism, in whatever form, have eventually

380 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

been brought face to face with the problem of that upon which
the mind impinges, the non-teleological stuff against which our
purposes seem to beat, and in struggling with which they dis-
cover themselves. If Plato insists that only the Good is
ultimately real, and all else is imitation and non-being, yet he
has to recognize a reality at least in the limitations which the
struggling elements of our mundane sphere set to our purposive
striving. If the elements but reflect the universal beauty,
they also distort it. If Aristotle finds in matter the potential,
yet it is not passively potential. It has an order of its own
which may run counter to the purposive order. The Platonic
dualism meets us again in Hegel's spatializing of the category of
spirit and its estrangement in its lapse to unconscious other-
ness. As Aristotle's potential, it meets us in Fichte's struggle
of the ego with the irrational surd of our nature, while Schelling
would make the physical energies merely lower categories in
the history of spirit as it struggles toward its conscious awaken-
ing. Bergson would make matter the inverse of reality — the
intellectual spatializing and degradation of a reality which is
essentially a psychic stream of growing, blending, interpene-
trating life-impulses. But, nevertheless, he has to acknowledge
that somehow in the struggle with matter, in order to mold
itself to its constitution, to maintain itself under its conditions,
life explodes like a shell into its inherent tendencies. In some
sense, then, the reality of matter, as having a part in the
realization of life, has had to be recognized even by those who
have categorically declared its non-existence.

In giving an adequate account of mechanical matter as an
external condition and instrument in the evolution of life, a
pluralistic conception of the world has a decided advantage over
the monistic. It is not forced to smuggle in through the back
door what it has cast out through the front door. It is free
to follow the lead of experience in recognizing different types of
reality. Among these are the physical types which, on the
one hand, through their own structure and laws set definite
conditions for the survival of life, and, on the other hand, fur-
nish the intellect with the instruments by which life becomes
liberated from slavery to the immediate present.

Even in dealing with the physical world, where mechanical

TELEOLOGICAL IDEALISM 381

conceptions have so long reigned supreme in our theorizing, it
has become more and more clear that mechanism alone, con-
venient as it is within certain limits, is inadequate as a final
philosophy. So far as the naturalistic aspect of the world is
concerned, it would seem that the available energy must con-
tinually run down as the streams run into the sea ; that heat
must reach more and more a condition of equal distribution
according to Carnot's law, and that the universe must] become
eventually stark still, or rather would have had to become so
infinite ages ago. That this law has not thus operated must be
due to the fact that mechanism is somehow a part of a larger
constitution which is fundamentally teleological and in which
life and mind are fundamental categories. Even to explain the
activities of matter, we find it convenient to think of it as some-
how interpenetrated by intelligence ; Maxwell's sorting omni-
science keeps the universe from running down to a dead level.
And Professor Henderson l has recently shown that it is im-
probable that the ensemble of maximal properties which con-
stitute the environment of life should have been produced by
mere chance. It is more congenial to our mind, at any rate,
to assume prospective intelligent selection within the physical
environment, fitting it for the abode of life.

On the other hand, I cannot feel that merely reducing the
universe to metaphysical mind-stuff, as in the various types of
panpsychism, necessarily ennobles life. Because metaphysical
idealism has seemed to furnish a congenial climate for our ideal
striving, we have often been inclined to overlook its logical
fallacies, its violation of common sense, the bankruptcy of its
ethics, the romanticism of its procedure. Few have under-
stood its technical terminology. But they have accepted it
emotionally, nevertheless, as a poem, a religion. Add to this
that many champions of absolute idealism, such as Fichte and
the Anglo-American idealists, have themselves been noble and
inspiring souls, whose emphasis has been on value rather than
stuff, and you have the reason for the recent vogue of panpsy-
chism. But the world is neither better nor worse for our meta-
physical conceptions. And if panpsychism is indifferent to the
realization of ideals, if it reduces the higher to the lower cate-

1 "The Fitness of the Environment " (Macmillan, 1912).

382 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

gories, if it fails to give us a preferential basis of values, if it
offers no call to our creative capacities, it is teleologically in-
distinguishable from the crassest type of materialism. This is
the logic of the fact that so many Hegelians of the Left com-
pletely faced about from absolute idealism to absolute material-
ism, or rather found that the former, as impersonally conceived,
was equivalent to the latter. The mere reduction of the stuff
of the universe to the type of mind-stuff is not sufficient to
guarantee its value. The lowest things, as well as the highest,
that we know in our experience are mental. The most de-
grading lusts are as much mental as the highest aspirations.
Mind covers the whole range of value from heaven to hell.

The pragmatic difference in metaphysical conceptions for
our ideals lies not in the stuff of our conceptions but in their
friendliness to what we feel to be our higher nature, the re-
enforcement of what we feel to be the best part of the universe,
our ideal demands.

We must not be misled by mere words. We must recognize
that pragmatically we have dynamic situations with their
variations and their tendency toward types, whatever the meta-
physical stuff may be. It is a mistake to suppose that by
adopting more euphonious terms for these situations, such as
"vital impulse" or " panpsychism, " we have either explained
or dignified the process. As general metaphysical entities
they do not alter the problem of continuity and evolution one
whit, though they may be more congenial to our imagination.
The problem in any case remains for science to discover for
our practical purposes of description and prediction the deter-
mining factors in the process ; and for philosophy and religion
to discover the immanent categories which enable us to read
the process with clearness and distinctness. We must conceive
a world which makes our minds feel at home. Teleologically,
it makes no difference whether we call the universe matter or
spirit, if we only realize that it is such as eventually to demand
and enforce ideals. This is its ultimate promise or potentiality.
What name we give to reality does not matter so long as its
properties, its pragmatic outcomes, are the same ; so long as
it can think and appreciate and furnish the object of our hopes ;
so long as it blossoms out into a sense for beauty, a demand for

TELEOLOGICAL IDEALISM 383

right, a worship of the ideal. It is true in any case that the
universe makes us for itself, to express itself.

Our direct acquaintance with the effectiveness of form is
limited to the operation of mind and to this in its higher ideal
striving. When we try to realize formal selection in the uni-
verse at large, it is at any rate easier to picture such selection
to ourselves if we think of a greater and better mind inter-
penetrating the various stages of the process with intelligent
interest, reenforcing the formal demands of the process and
eliminating failures.

Even if the conception of an abstract, immanent form should
satisfy our purely logical and aesthetic demands upon the uni-
verse, our ethical and religious needs would still call for an
interpenetrating and overarching personal constitution which
works for righteousness and beauty, which is sympathetically
concerned in ideal realization, which in short makes warm and
living the formal constitution of the process. We think of God
as the master-mind, interpenetrating our minds and nature
and, in a manner which we can but faintly grasp, guiding to
a meaningful issue.

To be omnipresent and universally effective, this mind
need not be the whole of things. Heat and gravitation are
present throughout the physical world, but they are not the
whole of the world. Take social history, — a great personality
like Jesus may permeate history and make it converge toward
him, may stamp and control history, and yet not be all of
history.

Of this large regulative and compensating universal constitu-
tion it must indeed seem that it does a wholesale rather than
a retail business. This would indeed be deadening to our
ethical and religious consciousness, except for the other analogy
derived from our own organic economy, namely, that the regular
adjustments become automatically purposive. So the whole-
sale operations of the universe require no attention. Maxwell's
sorting demon can do his work automatically. Mechanism can
take over the work of intelligence. It is only the retail unique
relations which require interest. This leaves mind, in its
higher reaches, free to deal with the rarer personal aspects of
the situation, the spots where, by virtue of spontaneity and

384 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

complexity, free and rational creativeness operates. And if
even here personal interest or sympathy seems appalling, we
must remember that the Mind of minds is not bounded by our
narrow limitations of space and time, but is capable of an in-
finitely larger field of interest. We may also imagine that the
occasions for sharing in this larger life lie in us — this supra-
finite life lying ever at our subliminal or supraliminal door,
ever waiting, and ever welcoming the proper organization and
the due awakening in us for its powers to be realized, as light
awaits the organization of an eye for its beauty of color to
appear. Thus pluralism, and pluralism alone, with its concep-
tion of growth and organization of centers and their mutual
and cosmic interpenetration, fills the need of the religious
demands of life.

As, moreover, our finite minds can interpenetrate and mold
various types of stuff into the unity of ideals, so the Master
mind may interpenetrate the variety of the processes of nature,
even though they are not mind. The statue can express ideals
even if it is not mind-stuff. We may thus have teleological
unity with variety of stuff and stages of development. We
may in closing adopt the language of Emerson, even though
we must conceive our relation to the Master mind as more
concrete and intimate than that implied in the Oversoul :
"We live in succession, in division, in particles. Meantime
within man is the soul of the whole, the wise silence, the uni-
versal beauty to which every part and particle is related, the
eternal one."

CHAPTER XIX

GENERAL SURVEY: THE FIVE ATTRIBUTES

THE problem of attributes is somewhat out of fashion since
the dominance of modern idealism. It has become a habit
to think of reality simply in terms of experience, and reflec-
tive experience at that. It seems to me, however, that with
our new epistemological tools we are in a position to take up
seriously some of our old metaphysical problems, applying the
pragmatic method. In using the term pragmatic, I do not
mean to commit myself to any of the special doctrines which
have recently passed under that name. I mean that any
reality must be conceived as the differences it makes to our
reflective purposes. This holds whether the reality in ques-
tion be of the thing type or the self type or some other type.

Substance has come to have a distinct scientific meaning
in modern times. So far as it is possible to revive the Spi-
nozistic conception of substance, it would now amount to the
epistemological postulate of totality, viz. the facts are part
of one world in such a way that every fact can, under certain
conditions, make a difference to other facts.1 What those con-
ditions are, it is for science to investigate. The differences
must also be capable of becoming differences to a reflective con-
sciousness under certain conditions, in order to concern us.

These differences are capable of being systematized into
certain attributes — summa genera of differences not further
reducible. My reflections have led me to believe that there
are five such attributes, irreducible to t^rms nf each other,
y\z^ stuff or energy, time, gpa-np, ^nnsHonsness, ^and form.
Future investigations will have to determine how far these
are ultimate attributes and whether there are others.

iSee "Truth and Reality," Chapter VII, pp. 133-138.
385

386 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

It is true that such attributes are abstractions from the total
matrix of reality. But to say that they are abstractions does not
mean that they are ideal or phenonemal in the sense that they
belie reality. Without abstraction we can have no science of
reality. These attributes are genuine aspects of reality if we
must recognize them as such in the procedure of experience.

The classical discussion of attributes goes back to Spinoza.
Spinoza makes causal difference, as well as conceptual, de-
pend upon the possession of a common attribute on the part
of the contents. He even goes farther and reduces the causal
relation to the conceptual: "If things have nothing in com-
mon, it follows that one cannot be apprehended by means of
the other and, therefore, cannot be the cause of the other." 1
This evidently is a confusion of causal dependence with logical
dependence — a confusion of which later idealism has so often
been guilty. With Spinoza this identification easily follows from
the ambiguity of his parallel attributes, as we shall see later.

The same reality, according to Spinoza, figures in different
attributes. Thus substance must figure as both thought and
extension. It must also figure in infinite other ways not in-
cluded in experience. Thus substance must possess not only
all the attributes of which there is evidence, but infinite others.
The more reality, the more determinations. Hence, complete
reality must have infinite determinations.

It is not necessary to point out that Spinoza is inconsistent
with his own thesis, that every fact within reality must be
conceived with reference to a context, or, as he would put
it, must have a common attribute with the rest of reality.
He is inconsistent, first, as regards the relation between thought
and extension, for extension must be conceived, and so must
be capable of making a difference to thought. To be indif-
ferent or parallel to thought would be to be without significance.
He is still more inconsistent as regards his infinite attributes.
These, by hypothesis, make no difference to thought, and yet
are assumed. On the contrary, in so far as we make an a priori
assumption, we must start with a finite number of attributes.
Else knowledge becomes impossible. As a matter of fact, we
have a right to assume only as many attributes as make a

1 Spinoza, "Ethics," Part I, Prop. iii.

GENERAL SURVEY: THE FIVE ATTRIBUTES 387

difference to judging or reflective experience. The question
whether these are altered by being known can have no mean-
ing, since it is only for reflective experience that attributes have
significance. We must assume that the attributes are what
they are consistently known-as in progressive human conduct.

It is unnecessary to point out that extension, with the
geometrical qualities it implies in Spinoza, cannot be made
an independent attribute apart from the energetic context in
which a thing figures, including our perceptual organic con-
text. Extension is as much a quality as is color or tone. To be
sure the quality of extension may be said to exist in contexts
independent of experience. But extension, to be known at any
rate, must figure in the context of our perceptual consciousness.
And if so it cannot be parallel to experience in Spinoza's sense
of forming an exclusive and complete world of its own.

Spinoza himself was far from consistent in the relative
emphasis he put upon the two attributes. When he dealt
with the problem of knowledge, he was inclined to regard
mind as the mere consciousness of the actions of the body
— idea corporis. He at least came dangerously near being
a materialistic realist. As he puts it: "The object of the
idea constituting the human mind is the body, and the body
as it actually exists."1 And again: "The human mind is
the very idea or knowledge of the human body." 2 No wonder
then that " the order and connection of ideas is the same as the
order and connection of things,"3 or as he puts it elsewhere,
" as the order and connection of causes." 4 It follows, also,
that his theory of association must be strictly physiological :
" Memory is simply a certain association of ideas involving
the nature of things outside the human body, which association
arises in the mind according to the order and association of
the modifications of the human body." 5 This materialistic
tendency is seen also in his physiological theory of emotions :
"Whatsoever increases or diminishes, helps or hinders the power
of activity in our body, the idea thereof increases or diminishes,
helps or hinders the power of thought in our mind." 6 It fol-

1 Part II, Prop. xiii. * Part II, Prop. xix.

» Part II, Prop. vii. * Part II, Prop. xix.

* Part II, Prop, xviii, note. • Part III, Prop. xi.

388 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

lows, on this view, that our knowing the object does not in any
wise alter the object, though our ideas may be inadequate,
fragmentary or confused. Such privation of knowledge is falsity.
Knowledge, when clear and distinct, takes account of the ob-
ject as it really is in its own eternal system of relations which
Spinoza calls God. Materialistic realists of to-day have re-
peated both the theory and inconsistency of Spinoza, for while
holding that mind is just the awareness of the body, he finds it
hard to rule out mental facts as such with their own unique
relations.

What blinded Spinoza to his epistemological materialism
was doubtless his play on words. Thus he argues, as we
have seen, that mind is the consciousness of the body. But
he argues further that "this idea of the mind is united to the
mind in the same way as the mind is united to the body." *
He thus, after telling us that "the object of our mind is the
body as it exists, and nothing else," substantializes this idea
of the body as having a "distinctive quality " 2 of its own. This
process can then be repeated on the idea of the idea, etc., ad
infinitum. But the fact is that there is no new content pro-
vided for in this repetition. It is purely a trick of language.
We remain where we started, with mind as the conscious-
ness of the bodily modifications. That we know that we
know, in any case, only signifies that the attitude of knowing
brings its characteristic feeling of belief with it, in so far as it
is successful.

When Spinoza, on the other hand, turns to the problem
of conduct, he becomes as idealistic as he is materialistic in
his epistemology. He attributes all agency to systematic
thought and the passive becomes synonymous with the con-
fused and unreal. For in the case of ethical conduct, cause
no longer means physiological processes, but clear and dis-
tinct ideas. Our mind is active "in so far as it has adequate
ideas." 3 "The passive states of the mind depend solely on
inadequate ideas."4 And man can be said "to act in obedi-
ence to virtue" only "in so far as he is determined for the
action because he understands." Finally, the mind's highest

1 Spinoza, " Ethics," Part II, Prop. xxi. * Part II, Prop, xxi, note.

1 Part III, Prop. i. 4 part ni, Prop. iii.

GENERAL SURVEY: THE FIVE ATTRIBUTES 389

knowledge and highest virtue is to know God. And to know
God is to love God and to love him with "that very love where-
by God loves himself," x "wherein our salvation or blessedness
or freedom consists."

Thus Spinoza halts between divided motives. In episte-
mology he tries, in opposition to the occasionalists with their
miraculous correspondence between the physical world and the
mental world, to simplify his problem by making physical ob-
jects with their relations the only real contents and agencies,
while mind is reduced to a mere spectator. In ethics he saves
the significance of conduct by making mind as reason or "clear
and distinct ideas," the real agent. The world of impulse and
sense becomes the world of passivity. He is thus at the same
time, though for different purposes, an epistemological ma-
terialist and an ethical idealist. Spinoza's logic, in either case,
leaves us only one attribute — one complete system whether
of matter or thought.

Modern science, in so far as it has been allowed to pursue
its own task, unhampered by metaphysical suppositions,
whether of the materialistic or idealistic sort, has_always in-
sisted _uppnas many attributes or independent variables as
the facts seem to require. These seem to be three for natural
science : space, time, and energy. The conceptionjof energy
has gradually supplanted the conception of matter as a uni-
veigal ideal of description. Matter is applicable orily~wrthin
a limited field. It islioTf applicable, for example, to electricity;
while energy with its equivalences of transformation can be
made to cover the whole extent of process, material and im-
material, physical and psychological.

In spite of the fact that natural science has found it neces-
sary to work with these three attributes, it has failed to de-
fine them in any clear way. The desire for simplification
has always made itself felt. Thus space and time have some-
times been regarded as pure quantity. But if space and time are
pure quantity, how can they be given distinct meaning? We
must look for the differentia of these attributes, as they are
in fact implied in our attitudes to the world of processes with
which science deals. Not the serial tools which they have in

1 Part V, Prop, xxxvi.

390 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

common, but their specific character, is what we must try to
make clear. Certainly, as pure quantity, time and space are
indistinguishable from each other and from quantity in general.
While it is convenient to reduce time and space to pure quan-
tity for certain artificial purposes of prediction, this should
not blind us to their true character in the world which we
intend thus to simplify.

Not only has the attempt been made to reduce time and
space to pure quantity, but the same attempt has been made
in regard to mass. Thus Karl Pearson would reduce mass to
acceleration. But if mass and energy are pure quantity how
can we get the different units with which quantity must deal ?
These units, obviously, mean something different, according as
we are concerned with chemical elements or electric potentials
or neural reactions. But this only shows the confusion that
has been too prevalent in the analysis of scientific concepts.

Moreover, while natural science, in its task of simplifying
and anticipating the world of perception, has been forced to
emphasize the above attributes, there are other attributes
which, though neglected, are nevertheless implied in the whole
procedure of natural science. Thus the attribute of conscious-
ness — the condition of the unique relation to mind of being
experienced or interesting, in short the awareness of a world,
with its complexity — has been neglected by the natural
scientist. This is natural inasmuch as this attribute is equally
present to the whole field of problems with which he deals,
and, therefore, for his specific purpose can be neglected. He
has set himself the task of dealing with a specific part of ex-
perience, not with experience as such.

.Again natural science assumes that its facts can be formu-
lated into a system, i.e. that they can be explained in terms
of a finite number of simple principles. It implies the reality
of logical form or that the laws of thought are also the laws of
things. This obviously is not deducible from the attributes
of space, time, and energy, but is a presupposition or ideal
which is implied in all our cognitive endeavor. It holds at
any rate in the part of the universe which is molded by our
will ; and if science is to be possible, this presupposition must
hold in the universe at large.

GENERAL SURVEY I THE FIVE ATTRIBUTES 391

II

It must be obvious, from this survey of the results of the
past, what our problem is. And while the inquiry did not
start from the assumptions of science, it must be a matter of
more than curious coincidence that the metaphysical needs
and the scientific needs point in the same direction, even though
the former set a much more comprehensive and articulate
program. Applying the pragmatic criterion, that we must
assume only such realities as can make differences to our reflec-
tive procedure, we must try to make clear what are the ulti-
mate types of differences which reality makes to our reflective
conduct, or, expressed in subjective terms, what ways of taking
or evaluating our world prove finally effective in our under-
standing and appreciation of it. Such types of differences we
shall call by the classic name of attributes. I shall now try, in
brief, to define these attributes — the summa genera in the
reflective evaluation of the character of our world.

Being

First a word about the attribute of "being," as it has been
called since Parmenides. By_JHi£iiig" we mean the_stuff
character of reality. This stuff is capable of making_definite
differences under statable ^conditions to ,jother_stuff. This
dynamic continuity of stuff, _with its equivalences, we call
energy.. The stuff that has been emphasized by modern ideal-
ism is meaning stuff — our reflective purposes. These con-
stitute one type of stuff, and must be taken account of as of
final importance for our appreciating and understanding of
the world. They enable us to differentiate the processes and
spread them out in series. Similarity, difference, causality,
reciprocity, etc., as general categories or modes of functioning
must be part of this account of stuff.

In order to make a difference to experience, reality need not
necessarily be reflective. On the contrary, reflective experience
will be seen to be dependent to a large extent upon non-reflec-
tive processes. The meaning of the object reflected upon de-
pends largely upon its unnoticed background. There are three
ways in which attention may be dependent upon unnoticed

392 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

facts. Thus processes, not attended to, make up the larger
associative context, the background of feeling and tendency,
of the object. The different meaning of man or evolution to
the scientist and to the common man is largely in the "fringe."
Or the unnoticed may be instrumental to the activity of at-
tention without itself being attended to. For example, the
words on the page that we read. We have a different conscious-
ness when we are attending to the meaning of the words from
what we have when we make the words themselves the
object. There may be processes, however, which are entirely
irrelevant to the purposive consciousness of the moment, as
well as unnoticed by it. Thus the pressure of our clothes, the
furniture of the room, the temperature, etc., even though not
attended to, make a difference to our consciousness which we
can easily see by an alteration of these processes. We have a
very different consciousness in reading a book out of doors un-
der the open sky from what we have in reading the same book
in our own study, though in either case we may not be attend-
ing to the setting. If we want one name for all these various
unnoticed mental processes I would suggest subattentive,1
instead of subconscious, which at best is misleading.

Not only are there mental processes beyond the circle of
reflective thought and making a difference to it ; there are also
processes which we cannot speak of as conscious experience
at all, which still make a difference to our reflective meaning.
That I can take up to-day the problems of yesterday or last
year and thus connect again with my own past, seems to be
dependent upon a continuity of processes which are not them-
selves conscious. The unity of the passing thought can ac-
count for the continuity of our consciousness only while we are
conscious. It cannot bridge over the gap between going to sleep
and waking up again, or account for the bringing back of ex-
periences which have not been active in the meantime. What
these processes are in their own character must be determined
by science according to its convenience. It must simplify them
and differentiate them according to our needs in meeting the

1 This term was suggested in an article in the Jour. Phil. Psychol. and Sci.
Meth., 1907. It has later been advocated by Dr. Marshall in the same journal,
but the term subconscious seems to have come to stay.

GENERAL SURVEY: THE FIVE ATTRIBUTES 393

complexity of our world. Mere a priori classification can count
for nothing.

One thing is certain, and that is the close relation between

what We Call physical_eriPT-ppy a.nH nnr mpntfl,] fl.nt.ivif.ipg It

is a commonplace that a cup of hot coffee may change our
emotional atitude towards the world. But I suppose we
would not on that account be guilty of speaking of coffee as
emotion stuff. Psychotherapy, again, has made us familiar
with the differences that mental processes can make to the
physiological. We have gotten over the notion that one pro-
cess in order to make a difference to another must be of the
same kind. Chemical energy is not the same as electrical,
though capable of making differences to it. So different
are the conceptual tools which we need in each case that elec-
trical energy is sometimes spoken of as immaterial. This,
I take it, only signifies that the conception of gravitation mass
is inapplicable. The difficulty of finding a common denomi-
nator between psychic processes and physiological seems still
greater, yet they are clearly interdependent. All we can
hope to do in science, and science must here be our last word,
is to show definitely the conditions under which the transfor-
mations take place. The following of the minute internal
transitions may forever lie beyond us.

Looking at the stuff character with reference to the impli-
cations of the reflective moment, we have found it convenient
to look at it as of three levels. These levels can be seen in a
cross section, as it were, of every reflective moment, the re-
flective consciousness showing its dependence upon marginal
or unnoticed experience and this again upon processes to which
the category of experience cannot be ascribed, and which
we speak of as dispositions.

Stuff has the advantage that it can be observed_jiire£tly.
TjHg p.n oh}ftcl-n£_irnTT|pdifl,tp. perception and judgment. The
other attributes of which:we~ste[il~~speak, viz. space, timeT'
consciousness~and form can only be observed or make~ardiflter-
ence to our judgment through tEe~difference they make to~the
stuff structure JoT~the world, including our own purposes!

1 shall speak of these attributes as non-being attributes,
not because they are less real, but because they are not stat-

394 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

able as stuff. In the language of philosophy the stuff charac-
ter has appropriated the term, "being." These non-being
attributes can be defined or differentiated from each other by
the difference which they make to the active purposes of the
self.

Time

It has been customary since Kant to deal with the time and
space attributes as series and therefore to insist upon their
ideal character. I have insisted, on the other hand, that the
serial character is relative, and that the real differentia of
these concepts must be found in characters of reality which
are not themselves serial, but furnish the rationale of the serial
construction. If you speak of time and space, for example,
as pure quantity, there remains, as we have already pointed
out, the problem of stating the relation of time and space to
the general concept of quantity, on the one hand, and to show
their differentia with reference to each other, on the other
hand; that is, the whole problem of definition remains. In
what, in other words, lies the difference in our purposive atti-
tude in evaluating space and time?

To speak first of time. What difference does time make
to the realization of our purposes? Energy, we have seen,
stands for constancy of process — for stable types of prediction.
And there is a degree of constancy or we could not have science.
But, on the other hand, it is a characteristic of our concrete
world that it does not stay put. We must recognize fleeting-
ness — growth and decay in much of reality. Constancy, in
our practical experience, seems at best relative. Hence, we
must predicate the attribute of time. It is precisely because
the universe is in perpetual flux, that the task of science — the
singling out of certain relevant identities which enable us to
find our way amidst the ever novel and different — becomes so
significant. In the frozen block-world of Parmenides we should
have no need of science. The constancy aspect is limited by
the flux aspect. And while we must recognize the former as
real, it seems but meager in extent beside the flowing world of
protean detail.

While, again, it is convenient, for certain abstract purposes

GENERAL SURVEY: THE FIVE ATTRIBUTES 395

of description, to reduce time to quantity, this must not blind
us to the nature of the processes which we intend and from
whose essential character we have abstracted for the partial
purpose. I insist that what we mean by the differences time
makes to our purposes is not statable as mere units of chro-
nology^- theintervals of the clock. There^muat— be_^flow,
movement, or we would not go to the trouble of inventing
units. This movement, even in the measurement of time,
ever belies our static definitions.1 Suppose that nothing really
happened — no running down of energy, no being born or
growing old, no change in values. In such a world we should
indeed declare time to be no more, to make no real difference.
Or rather we should have no concept of time at all. What
makes time real to us is that it necessitates new judgments,
whether because of transformation and' novelty'15 jbhe pur-

r in f.Tip £>hj^nt_whifih is e.yal-

^

u^tted. l§o long as this is the case we cannot express reality
in merely static categories. Our quantitative devices are in-
struments to adjust ourselves to this concrete flow.

It matters not, for this purpose, how you ultimately con-
ceive the stuff of the world. You may conceive the process
as the rearrangement of physical entities. Even then you
must have something besides the bits and their position to
account for the process of the perceptual world. I do not see,
myself, how the bits can be indifferent to the rearrangement
they must suffer, except as they are recognized as merely our
conceptual models. But whether you conceive the stuff of
reality in the last analysis as atoms and electrons or as purposive
systems of meanings, the question remains : When you have
thus conceived reality, why should it slip away ? Why does
it not remain chained in the present, as Parmenides would say ?
Why should there be rearrangement, whether a running up or
a running down process? As the world has no beginning,
neither process can be absolute, for then the world must have
run its course countless ages ago. The theory that the world
tends to an equilibrium or an equal distribution of heat, as
implied in Spencer's formula and the second law of thermo-
dynamics, presupposes a finite creation of the world.

1 See "Time and Reality," Psychol. Rev. Mon. Series, no. 26, pp. 23 and 24.

396 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

If you say, again, that the present rearrangement is the
result of previous rearrangement, and so on ad infinitum, why
should there be rearrangement at all? Why should not our
positional values remain fixed? Why should something creep
into our equations, whether subjectively or objectively, so as
to make them false? If you insist that reality remains fixed,
there at least remains the appearance of rearrangement in the
subject, and that is part of reality and must be met.

Given, on the other hand, time as a real character of the
world, you can account for the transformation of values, the
instability of positions or the falsifying of our judgments,
which is what it all amounts to in the end. You can also
furnish the rationale for our serial construction to meet such a
character of the world, while you can not derive the time char-
acter from the concept of series. The construction of time
infinities is a secondary affair, and can neither explain nor in-
validate the real time character. We should not say that
things move in time. This is putting the cart before the
horse. Our serial construction is made necessary, on the
other hand, because of the transformation of our facts and
values. Time furnishes the limiting value of certain serial
constructions, such as past and future, without which they
would be meaningless.

It is inverting the real situation to speak of contents as
carried over from one moment to another or as passing in and
out of time. What really takes place is that some contents
remain constant, others come and go. Our psychological
moments chase each other and fade like the shadows on the
mountains on a cloudy day, yet withal some constancy of
outline — of tendency and content — remains by means of
which we can realize their fading and fleeting existence. The
more permanent contents furnish the background upon which
the fleeting ones appear and disappear. Some of the latter
observe a certain rhythm. In the case of the earth clock,
and our artificial time pieces based upon it, we have socialized
this rhythm, relative though this is in the end to the process.
Then we use this rhythm to measure the enduring contents,
with their passing or accumulating increments. Having in-
vented intervals we can divide these at will, even to infinity.

GENERAL SURVEY: THE FIVE ATTRIBUTES 397

We then invert the process and imagine that the contents
run through our artificial divisions. The latter, however, have
no effect on the real overlapping or change. They are an after-
thought.

Space

And now a word about space. If time makes thejdifference
of transformation to our concrete realities^ space conditions.
^translation. IT time makes an intrinsic difference to our
processesT" space makes an externaldif7erence._ Tbe_characteT
of space, in other words, is such that it does not interfere with
movement. If space offered resistance, geometry, which is
based on free mobility, l would be impossible. It matters
not for our purposes whether space be actually empty or not.
I^is convenient, for scientific and practical purposes, tojsosit
space as a limit of exhaustion and as the absence of resistance,
i.e. to^ssumejijyDace zero. Only thus can we state Newton's
first law of motion^ Moreover, if we can approximate to
such a limit, it must be as objectively real as though we had
actually attained it.

We cannot rule out space by mere a priori considerations.
Thought must follow the facts and not dictate to them. What-
ever we must acknowledge as real cannot fail to be conceiv-
able. And pure space seems to be more than a conceptual
limit. Interstellar space seems to be practically pure. The
rays of light are, so far as we know, not interfered with in any
way until they strike solid bodies. Michelson's careful meas-
urements indicate that the earth rotates as though it moved
in empty space. What is true in the large may be equally true
in the minute. Thus the compressibility of the atom as in-
dicated by the experiments of T. W. Richards seems to point
to space intervals in the elementary structure of the universe.
Whether such observations as regards the existence of pure
soace prove final or not, this does not invalidate the reality of
space as the condition of the energetic interactions in space.

A more positive characteristic of space than that of free
mobility is that of distance or externality of energetic centers.

1 For a more complete analysis of the properties of real space, see chapter
XIII, pp. 234-243.

398 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

As distance, space conditions the equations of the astronomer
and the realization of our human social purposes. For even
though our purposes do not occupy space, they nevertheless
operate in space and space makes a difference to their realiza-
tion. If from Kansas I wish to communicate with a friend
across the sea, it makes a definite difference as regards the kind
of communication and the sort of relations that are possible
between us, that he is some thousands of miles away.

Spatial distance does not of course prevent energetic over-
lapping of centers. In the case of my friend it is true that my
purpose to communicate may become continuous with cer-
tain physiological processes, and these in turn may become
continuous with certain physical energies which in turn span
the distance between me and my friend. But the overlap-
ping is different and the realization of the social purpose is
different because of the distance. No mystical monism can
remedy this difference. No mere intellectual change of point
of view can alter the practical situation in which space figures
as one condition.

We must, of course, be careful not to confuse the real space
condition with our psychological or logical perspectives with
their ideal distinctness or externality of parts. Things cannot
move in an ideal system. Serial space is a construction — an
after-picture to symbolize the relations of things, whether phys-
ical masses or geometrical figures or self-conscious individuals,
in zero space. If space were merely an ideal system, distance
and free mobility would both be figurative without any reality
for the figure. If we admit a real zero space, we can easily
account for phenomenal or serial space, but not vice versa.

I grant cheerfully that all our quantitative measurements
are relative. Our serial constructions, our geometrical as our
chronological models, are our tools by means of which we
strive to meet the actual nature of the world. But I do not
see how any mere contradictions in our concepts can rid us
of characters of reality which condition all our real purposes,
whether as regards transformation or translation. We must
penetrate beneath the apparent contradictions and revise our
concepts in conformity with the reality which they mean to ex-
press. Concepts must be our servants, not our masters.

GENERAL SURVEY : THE FIVE ATTRIBUTES 399

Consciousness

It is convenient to treat consciousness, the condition of aware-
ness or interest, as a unique attribute. It is absurd to sup-
pose that our conative attitudes and organized meanings be-
come atoms and molecules when we are not aware of them;
they change, not in stuff but in value when they are illumined
for an instant by interest. Consciousness is a new character
added to our conative purposes under certain conditions of
intensity and readjustment. The conative purposes themselves
may remain as constant as individual existence. They may
even become permanent parts of social history.

Qpnsciousnesg or awareness is a neutral light. It does_no$
create distance nor does it create meaning. It may be an
awareness of meaning or an awareness of sensatibnu In *5ur
developed experience it is both. To make such awareness
possible, there must preexist, as conditions, on the one hand,
the object-context of which we become aware, and on the other
hand, the system of conative tendency which forms the sub-
jective condition of awareness. But neither the object-con-
text nor the system of tendency is, as such, awareness. When
interest is lighted, under its peculiar conditions, a new relation-
ship to the organism originates which cannot be reduced into
other existential relations such as temporal, spatial, causal,
nor into logical or aesthetic relations, though these now come
to have subjective value.

' Consciousness thus conditions the relation of being felt.
It converts what otherwise would be a type of mere inter-
action into contemplation. What is contemplated may be an
external meaning — a proposition in Euclid. It may be an
electrical shock. It may be a relation such as distance. What
is thus contemplated need not be experience stuff. It in-
cludes not merely experience transition, but space transition.
It may be any kind of energy or relation. On the other hand,
a meaning may be as objective or external to consciousness as
space. We do not make Homer's meaning or the Sistine Ma-
donna, when we become conscious of it, any more than we
make the distance from the earth to the moon when we take
account of it. Consciousness in any case is a gift which for

400 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

its condition presupposes on the one hand conative tendency,
on the other hand the shock of a stimulus — a situation to be
met whether intra- or extra-organic. A mere continuity or
succession of objects is not a consciousness of continuity or
succession. Awakened tendency, or interest, is also required.
And then the content may come in temporally discrete pulses
of experience.

Thus in being conscious there are always end-terms; and
one of the end-terms must be a conative system of tendencies.
The terms need not be a logical subject and object. They
may be blind instinct on the one hand, and any fascinating
stimulus on the other. But one of the end-terms is always
conative in character. Consciousness is always an _ aspect, jgf
the situation which we call interest.

Consciousness has been confused, on the one hand, with
its conditions, on the other with its species. It has, in the
first case, been regarded by the materialist as a product or
effect of chemico-biological causes. But the materialist him-
self has admitted that it is not comparable with what is or-
dinarily meant by effect. It is rather an epiphenomenon —
a miracle added to the process, without making any causal
difference to it. On the other hand, we may with the episte-
mological idealist regard this awareness as everywhere and
always present and indissociable from the contents of reality.
But here we are dealing with an assumption whkh seems to
run counter to the facts as known in our finite experience. I
prefer a third alternative, which indeed is implied in the bank-
ruptcy of the other two, in accounting for our experience. This
is that consciousness is an attribute added to our energetic
relation of conative tendency and stimulus under certain con-
ditions — a unique gift of reality in its larger sense to some of
the interactions of our finite ego. Since obeying regular laws
it is no miracle ; since an aspect of all our waking experience,
it is no more mysterious than other unique types of reality
such as space. Whether it is an abstract and ontologically
separable attribute of the universe or is ever-present as an
aspect of a comprehensive absolute experience does not matter
for the problem in question. In either case, what is a gift to
our finite experience preexists as a character of a larger reality.

GENERAL SURVEY: THE FIVE ATTRIBUTES 401

This character of awareness spans the whole field of interest,
from the immediate interest of instinctive attention, where we
have the "mere awareness of," to that of the most elaborate
apperception of "knowledge about."

In the second place, consciousness has been confused with
the species of its content. It has sometimes been treated
as though it meant exclusively logical awareness, to the ruling
out of non-logical types. Again it has been treated as though
it signified simply motor awareness, as opposed to ideational.
But the stating of such definitions is a sufficient refutation of
them. The awareness itself is quite colorless. It is the psy-
chological processes which color it ; and here there is no reason
why one process should be given the preeminence over the rest.

I anticipate the most difficulty from the fifth attribute of
which I am going to speak, viz. form or direction. We have
tried so far to state the universe in terms of four attributes,
those of stuff or energy, time, space, and consciousness. But
none of these attributes answers_the^quejtion : Does the pro-
cess have direction, or is there validity in the flux ? This is not
accounted for by stuff, for the stuff character does not contain
its own " measure." It is precisely because we recognize that the
process is not what it ought to be, because our finite struc-
tures seem relative, that the question of validity is raised. The
question is not answerable in terms of time, for time merely
means transformation. Whether transformation towards chaos
or towards unity is not answered by time. It is not statable
as space, for while space conditions the realization of meaning,
it does not make it valid. You cannot reduce the demand
for form to mere mechanical sequence, whether psychical or
physical, conscious or unconscious. There remains some-
how within us the longing for order and unity, in spite of,
yea, because of, the fragmentariness of our finite meaning.
The merely relative fails to satisfy us.

Valid relations are a distinct type or genus from conscious-
ness with the motley array of existences which it reveals. In
the first place, our awareness may be bound up with error and
illusion. That it is largely so in our experience is attested

402 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

by the whole story of science. In the second place, valid re-
lations may exist without our being conscious of them. We
do not originate Euclidian geometry by becoming aware of its
logical relations. While valid relations presuppose mind and
also awareness at some time, we do not have to be awake all
the time to keep the argument valid. And the long buried
past, when once brought to consciousness, sometimes is found
to be more valid than our present cogitations.

Validity implies a constitution, different from the sequential
or causal, in the light of which we criticize that which happens
and strive to establish clearness and distinctness in the midst
of the seemingly confused relations of experience. This ideal-
ization of life, this attempt to establish the ought in what is,
must be taken as a unique type of evaluation. When we
insist that there ought to be truth, beauty, and goodness, in
spite of the relativity of history and our individual judgments,
we have at least implied a limit, a direction of history which is
not relative. Else all our judgments would be equally mean-
ingless, and there could be no degrees of worth, as in the dark
all cows are gray.

The absolute idealist insists that in the absolute experience
we have such a standard. This absolute experience is even
now shared by us. It is this that gives rise to our conscious-
ness of fragmentariness, which accounts for our finite sense
of failure, and of which we are even now conscious as the final
truth, the purpose eternally fulfilled. But the irony of his-
tory gives the lie to any such assumption. The absolute it-
self, as our concept, is subject to the transmutation of time.
It is the expression of the finite now. Each stage of the process
must create its own absolute, find its own satisfaction. The
absolute, therefore, is for us at any rate merely a logical ideal.
Epistemologically, it is relative. The concept of it, too, pre-
supposes direction for such validity as it has.

That the idea of direction is valuable as a regulative idea
or limit cannot be doubted. But can we also attribute onto-
logical reality to the same? Or is it merely a hypothetical
limit, the index of our ideal strivings? It seems to me, if it is
required to give meaning to our relative and fragmentary pur-
poses, that it must be at least as real as those purposes them-

GENERAL SURVEY: THE FIVE ATTRIBUTES 403

selves. The straight line must be at least as real as the num-
berless variations of curvature of which it is the limit. And it
is worth more, for without it there could be no such thing as
measure. And so with our more general ideal demands, as
contrasted with the world of existential processes.

To guarantee the validity of process or to furnish the basis
for science, virtue, and beauty, the form must be selective,
that is, must somehow condition the survival of structures.
Only thus can it satisfy that demand for finality which the
finite process at any one time fails to fulfill. This does not
mean that every item is predetermined by a final cause or
Idea. It need only mean that, in the changes and chances of
the cosmic process, in the fluctuations and mutations of life,
certain ideals of clearness and distinctness are enforced by
the universe, however much beyond our comprehension such
operation may be. This would accomplish in the large what
our selective will as a fragment in the evolution of the universe
strives to accomplish in the small. . ^

That formal selection may condition survival we know
from experience. Evaluation in terms of ideals is an impor-
tant condition in social survival. Human beings are socially
approved, not so much for their size, weight or strength, as
for their satisfying certain ethical, aesthetic, and intellectual
standards. They may, for example, be selected for their
beauty rather than their strength and thus continue the race.
This holds to a certain extent in animal selection as well. And
in the survival of plant life and even of certain conditions of
inorganic nature — the configurations of hills and valleys within
our human control — form often plays the most important
part in our selection. If the universe is interpenetrated and
controlled in the last analysis by a master mind — the ful-
fillment of our ideal demands — formal value, rather than
quantity of energy, may be the final basis of survival and
eternity.

These attributes, while they are ultimate or irreducible
kinds, differ from the parallelistic attributes of Spinoza in
that they all make a difference to our creative purposes, whether
they make any differences to each other or not. Hence they
do not involve an epistemological contradiction. They at

404 A REALISTIC UNIVERSE

least overlap as known. They also overlap in other ways.
Space makes a definite difference to interacting energies in
space. Time again conditions the existence of process at all.
Without it we should have a petrified world. Consciousness
makes subjective realization of a world possible, while form
makes it possible to understand and appreciate such a worTcT.

•

INDEX

Absolute, matter and the, 15 S.

Absolute idealism, hypothesis of, to
account for experience, 20, 27-32.

Abstraction, idealization as, 310.

Abstractions, errors of, 64.

Activity, accounting for, in analysis
of mental processes, 185-188 ; con-
cept of, under a timeless system,
252 ; confusion of form with the
concept of, 329.

.^Esthetic ideals, attempts to differ-
entiate between scientific and moral
ideals and, 309-311.

Affection, one dimension of the will,
171.

Affective qualities, character of the,
and difficulty of distinguishing, 168-
169. .

Alexander, S., definition of "mind,"
164; "On Sensations and Images"
by, cited, 166 n.

Analogy, theory of, regarding knowl-
edge of other selves, T53.

Anaxagoras, on potential properties,
46; the Noiia of, 115.

Angell, " Psychology," cited, 120 n.

Animals, consciousness in, 143-144.

Aquinas, Thomas, on individuation, 62.

Aristotle, on metaphysics as compared
with other sciences, xv ; on the
pragmatic significance of things, 70 ;
concept of form of the body, men-
tioned, 140 ; objections of, to
atomists' conception of space, 245 ;
character of time as laid down by,
255 ; on the difficulty of making
particular judgments in regard to
the future, 297 ; confusion of form
and activity by, 329 ; view of
finalism regarding evolution ac-
cording to, 362-365 ; forms, 377.

Arrhenius, on infinity of world, 241.

Art, metaphysics, and, xx-xxi.

Atomic realism, the ideal of, 20-27.

Attention, consciousness as an ingredi-
ent of, 139 ; question of dependence
upon distribution of consciousness,

141-124 ; physical factors in, 170-
171 ; one dimension of the will, 171 ;
concept of, under a timeless system,
252 ; attempt at differentiation of
ideals based on relation to, 311-313 ;
dependence of, upon unnoticed facts,
391-392.

Attributes, the five, 385 ; classical dis-
cussion of, dating back to Spinoza,
386 ; theory of Spinoza concerning,
386-389 ; attitude of modern sci-
ence toward, 389 ; three insisted upon
by modern science, 389 ; the at-
tribute of being, 391-394 ; non-being
attributes, 393-394 ; time, 394-397 ;
space, 397-398 ; consciousness, 399-
401 ; form, 401—403 ; wherein these
attributes differ from the parallelistic
attributes of Spinoza, 403 ; over-
lapping of, 403-404. See, for further
discussion, the main divisions of the
book.

Augustine, on mental processes, 130;
reference to, 339.

Awareness, consciousness the precon-
dition of, 135-136 ; metaphysical dif-
ference, 136. See Consciousness.

B

Being, the divine truth of, 3-5; re-
lation of matter and the absolute
to, 15 ff. ; discussion of, as one of
the attributes, 391-394.

Bergson, quoted on reality of things, 67 ;
position of, as to time, 259 ; theory
concerning evolution, 365, 366 ; on
matter, 380 ; law of matter, 83.

Berkeley, formula of, 28 ; on the relative
character of extension, 21; confusion
of sensations and sense-qualities, 89 ;
witness, 131.

Biological terms, presuppositions of
space construction expressed in, 21 Iff.

Bode, B. H., theory concerning con-
sciousness, 120 n.

Bodily activity, relation of conscious-
ness to, 140.

Body, potentialities of, 129.

405

41 Hi

INDEX

Boodin, John E., "Truth and Reality"
by, cited and quoted, 68, 94, 147,
385; articles by, cited, 107, 191, 204,
251, 277, 283, 324, 392, 395.

Bradley, cited concerning the reality of
relations, 93, 94 ; logical relations
confused with energy relations by,
107.

Broad, C. D., a reply to a criticism
by, 76 n.

Brown, Thomas, quoted on difference
between qualities, 84.

Causality, concept of, 100-103 ; con-
cept of an energy system substi-
tuted for, 103-105 ; under a timeless
system, 252.

Cayley, reference to, 217.

Chicago School, creative contribution
of the cognitive relation emphasized
by, 98 n. ; functional view of con-
sciousness expressed by, 119-120;
concerning consciousness, 120 n.

Clifford, reference to, 237.

Comenius, quoted as to beginnings of
metaphysics, xiv.

Companionship, thought and, 193-194.

Conduct, Spinoza's attitude toward
problem of, 388.

Conductivity, a physical property of
real space, 242.

Consciousness, the divine truth of, 8—
9; the concept of, 115 ff. ; exam-
ination of theories concerning, 115-
129 ; and mind stuff, 129-133 ; ques-
tion of what practical difference can
be made to our world by, 134 ; the
pragmatic difference of, 135-141 ;
the distribution of, 141-145 ; other
problems of, 145-150 ; question
whether a mental fact, 164-166 ;
as one of the five attributes, 385 ;
an attribute that has been neglected
by natural science, 390; discussed
as an attribute, 399-401.

Conservation of energy, law of, and its
definite meaning in connection with
special energy systems, 47.

Conservation of mass, empirical char-
acter of law of, 48.

Constancy of the self and of feelings,
175-180.

Continuities between minds, mental
distinguished from physical, 191 ff. ;
two types, material and immaterial,
199.

Continuity, not accounted for by ex-
perience, 16 ; as a characteristic of
real space and of mathematical space,
237-240 ; to be distinguished from
the mathematical concept, 238.

Cosmology, as one of the types into
which problems of metaphysics are
divided, xxi-xxii.

Creighton, J. E., article on "The No-
tion of the Implicit in Logic," cited,
271 n.

D

Degradation of energy, law of, 48-49.

Democritus, atomic theory of, 20.

Descartes, on primary and secondary
qualities, 85 ; criterion of truth, 320-
321.

Development, differentiation of ideals
from point of view of, 313.

Dewey, John, on the creative contri-
bution of the cognitive relation, 98
n. ; theory concerning consciousness,
119-120.

Differentiation of ideals, 309-316.

Dimensionality, as a property of real
space and of geometric space, 236.

Direction, derivation of meaning of evo-
lution from conception of, 350 ; recog-
nition of, necessary to solution of
the problem of the one and the
many, 355 ; attribute of, gives mean-
ing to conception of immortality as
the persistence of individual unity,
356. See also Form.

Distance, as a characteristic of space,
397-398.

Distribution of consciousness, 141—145.

Driesch, "Philosophy of the Organ-
ism," quoted, 364-365.

Dual nature of the self, 155-163.

Dunlap, quoted on time and the spe-
cious present, 257.

Duration, psychological sense of, 256.

Durkheim, social variables, 43.

E

Ebbinghaus, dual nature of the self,
155-156 ; reference to, 179.

Electrical energy system, postulates of
an, 38-40.

Electrical theory of matter, 22-23.

Emerson, references to, 349, 384.

Emotions, largely sensational, 167.

Empirical laws of energy, 47-51.

End terms in the interest relation, the
prejudice against, 161-163.

INDEX

407

Energy, as one door to reality, 3-4, 11 j
and things, 15 ff. ; discussion of na-
ture of, 33-37 ; postulates of differ-
ent types of systems of, 37-46 ; some
empirical laws of, 47-51 ; relation of
systems of, to one another, 51-61 ;
theory of consciousness as a form of,
115; necessity of adding conscious-
ness when trying to define it in terms
of, 118-119; consciousness and, 147-
148 ; problem of immortality relates
to, rather than to consciousness, 149 ;
spatial distance implied by, 226-227 ;
discussed as one of the five attributes,
385 ; insisted upon as an attribute
by modern science, 389.

Energy system, concept of, substituted
for concept of causality, 103—105.

Energy systems, postulates of, 37-46 ;
relation of, to one another, 51-61.

Entelechies, office of, in accounting for
prospective value of the parts of the
protoplasm, 365.

Ethical realization, form and, 344—350.

Everett, C. C., on the problem of iden-
tification of the ideals, 308-309.

Evolution, and direction, 350-355;
theories of, 360 ff . ; attitude of mech-
anism, 360-362 ; viewpoint of final-
ism, 362-365 ; theory of vitalism,
365-368 ; a new teleology suggested,
368-378 ; final theory must include
both mechanism and finalism, 370 ;
function of matter in process of, 379-
381.

Existence of space, proofs of, 226-234.

Experience, metaphysics a final evalua-
tion of, xv ; insufficiency of, as an
account of reality, 15-20 ; its own con-
tinuity not accounted for by, 16 ; in-
terest not accounted for by, 17 ; other
ways of proving insufficiency of, 17-
20; bearing of, on the future, 298-
299 ; necessary to idealization, 309.

Extension, place of, in scientific con-
ception of physical nature, 21 ; as a
property of things in a perceptual en-
ergy system, 36 ; not an independent
attribute, 387.

Externality, law of, 210 ; as a property
of real space and of geometric space,
235 ; of energetic centers as a char-
acteristic of space, 397-398.

Fechner, on life, 42 ; on consciousness
in plants, 144.

Feelings, implied by consciousness, 142 ;
largely physical in character, 167-
168 ; constancy and change in, 175-
178.

Fichte, quoted concerning geometric
space, 223 ; on form, 337.

Finalism, view of, regarding evolution,
362-365 ; mechanism and, included
in final theory of evolution, 370.

Fine, on continuity, 238.

Form, the divine truth of, 9-11 ; and
reality, 307 ff. ; and the Ought, 326
ff . ; the nature of, 326-338 ; validity
and, 338-344 ; and ethical reali-
zation, 344-350 ; evolution and direc-
tion, 350-355; question as to how
forms preexist and what forms are
presupposed, 377-378 ; the effective-
ness of, 378 ; consideration of, as
one of the five attributes, 385, 401-
403.

Freedom, accounting for, in analysis of
mental processes, 185-188.

Freudian school, balked disposition,
187.

Fusion, law of, 210.

Future, knowledge of the, 296-303.

G

Geometric space, psychological space
and, 207-224.

Geometry, properties of real space dis-
tinguished from those of, 235-243 ;
viewed as the idealizing process in
the abstract, 375.

God, the philosopher's conception of,
325 ; matter and, 378-384.

Gotch, on relation of nervous and elec-
trical types of energy, 55.

Greek view of identity of the ideals,
308.

Green, reality denied to things as con-
trasted with values by, 110.

Harmony in ideals, 317-318.

Hegel, logic of, xvi ; values of things,

110; mentioned, 120; on history, 281,

337; spatializing of spirit, 380.
Henderson, cited, 56, 381.
Heraclitus, adaptation from, 53 ; on

form, 332, 333 ; quoted, 349, 351, 359.
Hildebrand, on art, 320.
History, justification and practical aim

of, 294-295.
Holt, cited, 96 n. ; quoted, 161, 162.

408

INDEX

Homogeneity, as a characteristic of real

space and of geometric space, 236-

237.
Homoloidal character of real space,

237.
Hume, David, on causality, 102-103 ;

"Treatise on Human Nature," cited,

159.

Idealism, loss of significance to space
when translated into terms of abso-
lute, 223-224; attempt of, to rule
out existence of space, 247 ; teleo-
logical, 360 ff.

Idealistic systems of philosophy, ad-
vantages of, xix-xxi.

Ideality of space, 208.

Ideals, identity of the, 307 ff. ; efforts
toward unification of, 307-309; ef-
forts at differentiation of, 309-316;
unity, harmony, simplicity, and uni-
versality the four essentials of, 316-
321 ; the content of, 321-325.

Identity, of the self, 175-180; con-
sciousness of, in the group mind, 202-
203 ; of the ideals, 307-325.

Images, social aspects of, 146-147.

Immortality, question of consciousness
and, 149 ; effect of the craving for,
on the will, 190 ; of social minds,
204 ; meaning given to conception
of, by assuming attribute of direc-
tion, 356.

Impenetrability, as a property of Par-
menides" world, 244.

Individual and social minds, 191-204.

Individuation of things, 69-73.

Inertia, a universal characteristic of
energy, 35.

Infinity, as a characteristic of real space
and of geometric space, 240-241.

Instinctive tendencies, difference made
to, by consciousness, 138.

Interaction theory of consciousness,
128-129.

Interest, insufficiency of experience to
account for, 17 ; contrasted with
consciousness, 137 ; consciousness an
aspect of the situation called, 400.

Interest relations, 105-106.

Interpenetration, a fundamental law
of the thing, 83-84.

Intuition, mode of, applied to estimate
of qualities, 84 ; dependence of ge-
ometry upon, for its starting point,
215-217.

James, William, on self-sufficiency of
experience as an account of reality,
15 ; essays by, cited, 96 n. ; view of
mental processes expressed by, 130 ;
account of Fechner by, quoted, 144 ;
quoted in connection with the dual
nature of the self, 156 ; on the sub-
ject-object relation, 160, 161 ; on the
basis of the consciousness of mental
activity, 170-171 ; cited, 187.

Judging process, time and the, 273-282.

Kant, Immanuel, rise of hypothesis of
absolute idealism from doctrine of,
27-28 ; space concept of, 208 ff . ;
on the existence of empty space, 228 ;
arguments of, against space concept,
245-247; on the character of time,
265 ; categorical imperative, 335, 336.

Kapp, Gisbert, "Electricity," cited, 22.

Knowing minds, methods to be pur-
sued, 151-153 ; the theory of analogy,
153; the mystical theory, 153-155;
the traditional psychological theory
of the dual nature of the self, 155-
163 ; what is meant by mind, 164
ff. ; question whether consciousness
is mental, 164-166 ; physical char-
acter of sense data, sensory elements,
mental operations, and feelings, 166-
168 ; difficulty of distinguishing the
affective qualities, 168-169 ; physical
nature of thought in its content as-
pect, 169-170 ; physical factors in
attention, 170-171 ; character of
mind disclosed by mental acts as
will, 171-172; the will the mental
part of the mind, 173-174; the
identity of the self, 175-180 ; unity
of the self, 180-184 ; place of activity
and freedom, 185-188 ; value and
worth of conduct as explained by dy-
namic theory of the self, 188—190.

Knowledge, consciousness and, 147 ; re-
lation of time to, 268.

Ladd and Woodworth, "Elements of

Physiological Psychology," quoted,

212.
Language, substitution of, for concrete

situations for knowing minds, 154-

155.

INDEX

409

Larmor, Sir Joseph, quoted on ener-
getic system, 42.

Leibniz, relational aspect of space em-
phasized by, 207 ; confusion of form
with activity by, 330.

Life, postulates of such an energy sys-
tem as, 40-42.

Locke, on primary qualities, 85-87.

Logic, implied by metaphysics, xv;
geometrical construction a matter
of, 220-221.

Logical relations, 100 ; logical systems,
106, 107.

Lotze, conception of the universe as a
polyphonic unity by, 63 ; on the
kinship of the ideals, 308.

Lovejoy, A. O., articles on "The
Problem of Time in Present French
Philosophy" by, 259 n.

M

MacDougall, Robert, quoted on the
psychological present, 256.

McGilvary, E. B., cited, 119; view of
consciousness as "a unique together-
ness," 121 n.

Maps, space, 211.

Marshall, use of term "subattentive"
advocated by, 392.

Material and immaterial continuities,
199.

Mathematics, space considered from
aspect of, 207, 215-224.

Matter and God, 378-384.

Maxwell, Clerk, the "sorting omnis-
cience" of, 49, 367, 381, 383 ; quoted
on homogeneity of geometric space
and real space, 237.

Mead, G. H., "Definition of the Psy-
chical," cited, 120 n.

Meaning, relation of consciousness to,
121-123.

Mechanical energy system, postulates
of a, 37-38.

Mechanism, hypothesis of, regarding
evolution, 360-362 ; limitations of,
369-370 ; both fihalism and, included
in final theory of evolution. 370.

Mendel's law, persistence of qualities
shown by, 81-82 ; of types, 374.

Mental act, consciousness as a, 164-166.

Mental activities, relation between
physical energy and, 393.

Mental and physical continuities of
minds, 191-192.

Mental processes, viewed as quanti-
tatively comparable, 116; two con-

ceptions of existence of, when we are
not conscious of them, 130 ; partly
physical character of, 167.

Metaphysics, meaning of, xiii ff. ; place
of, xiii-xv; permanent claim of, on
human nature, xv; presuppositions
of, xv-xvii ; function of, xvii-xx ;
relation between art and, xx-xxi ;
is science, not art, xxi ; problems of,
customarily divided into ontology
and cosmology, xxi-xxii ; division of
problems of, upon concepts of en-
ergy, consciousness, space, time, and
form, xxii.

Mill, J. S., quoted on constancy in a
series of feelings, 177 ; question of,
as to how past and future can co-
exist in the present, 255.

Mind, the reality of, 4 ; consciousness
and, 115 ff.

Minds, knowing, 151-163 ; individual
and social, 191-204.

Mind stuff, consciousness and, 129-
133.

Minot, C. S., quoted concerning con-
sciousness, 115; cited, 127.

Mobility, free, as a characteristic of
space, 397.

Montague, W. P., quoted on conscious-
ness, 122 n.

Moore, A. W., "Pragmatism and its
Critics," cited, 120 n.

Moore, G. E., on consciousness as a
mental fact, 164-165.

More, L. T., quoted concerning space,
227.

Motion, usefulness of conception of
pure space in explaining, 229-232 ;
concept of, under a timeless system,
251-252 ; accepted as a universal
property of matter, 254-255.

Motor sensations, identification of
consciousness with, 119-120.

Miinsterberg, Hugo, cited concerning
contrast between mental and physi-
cal facts, 192.

Mystical theory of knowledge of other
minds, 153-154.

N

Natural science, the three attributes
required for, 389.

Nature, insufficiency of experience to
account for, 18-19.

Neutralism, theory of, regarding re-
lations and things, 95-99.

410

INDEX

Newcomb, Simon, article on "Matter,"
quoted, 27 ; article "Space," quoted,
236-237.

New realism, movement called, 96.

Newton, Isaac, controversy with Leib-
niz over space concept, 207 ; influ-
ence of theories of, on the space con-
cept, 229, 245.

O

Objections to real space, 243-247.

Objective distance, possibility of, re-
sulting from conception of pure space,
230-232.

Obscurantism, metaphysics confused
with, xiii.

Occultism, metaphysics and, xiii.

One and the many, problem of the, 355-
356.

Ontology, as one of the types into
which problems of metaphysics are
divided, xxi-xxii.

Organic energy system, postulates of
an, 40-42.

Ostwald, "Principles of Inorganic
Chemistry," quoted, 81 ; conscious-
ness treated as a form of energy by,
115-116.

Ought, form and the, 236 ff . ; defined
as the consciousness of the form-
character of the universe, 356 ; ob-
jectivity of the, 357 ; the only way
of serving the, 359.

Palmer, reference to, 312.

Parmenides, objections of, to real space
concept, 226, 243-244.

Past, regarded as a fourth dimension
of time, 286-288 ; knowledge of the
present and the, contrasted, 289-296.

Past and future, concept of, under a
timeless system, 252.

Pearson, Karl, attempt of, to reduce
mass to acceleration, 390.

Peirce, C. S., view of matter by, 372.

Perception, consciousness and, 147.

Perry, R. B., "Present Philosophical
Tendencies," cited, 96 n. ; "Con-
ceptions and Misconceptions of
Consciousness," cited, 121.

Philosophy, what constitutes, xiii ; new
opportunity of, under present-day
conditions, xv.

Physical energy, relation between men-
tal activities and, 393.

Physical properties of real space, 242.

Physiology and psychology, 211-213.

Pillsbury, "Essentials of Psychology,"
quoted, 212.

Pitkin, W. B., summary of Sumner's
researches, 213.

Plant life, evidences of consciousness
in, 144.

Plato, quoted on the contrast between
the present and the past, 289 ; identi-
fication of the ideals by, 308 ; form
confused with concept of activity
by, 329 ; quoted concerning the
materialistic view of reality, 339 ;
view of finalism regarding evolution
according to, 362-363; forms, 377.

Poincar6, H., "The Value of Science,"
quoted, xx, 23 ; cited and quoted
in connection with geometric space,
215 ff . ; "Science and Hypothesis,"
quoted, 234, 235; quoted on the
metaphysical continuum, 238-239.

Postulates of energy systems, 37-46.

Pragmatic character of time, 264-273.

Pragmatic difference of consciousness,
135-141.

Pragmatic view of things, 68, 69-73.

Present, time and the concept of the
psychological or "specious," 255-
260 ; and past contrasted, 289-296.

Presuppositions of metaphysics, rv-
xvii.

Properties of space, 234-243.

Psychological space, 207, 208-215.

Q

Qualities, knowing things by their, 74
ff. ; viewed as energies that can be
tapped under definite conditions, 75 ;
the potential as well as the actual
energies of things, 75 ; things possess
different, in different contexts, 76 ;
identification of a thing with its, 76—
77 ; what must be included in a
thing's, 77 ; not created by human
nature, 77-78 ; reality and persist-
ence of, 80-82 ; problem of relative
importance of, 84-89 ; importance
of, decided by the purpose in ques-
tion, 89 ; avoidance of confusion of
sensations and sense qualities, 89-
91 ; of values, 108-112.

Quantity, mental processes measurable
as to, 116-117; space and time as
pure, 389-390; attempt to reduce
mass and energy to pure, 390.

INDEX

411

Rankine, summary of views of, on
energy, 36-37.

Reality, doors to, found in being or
energies, time, space, consciousness,
and form, 3-11 ; insufficiency of ex-
perience as an account of, 16-20 ;
application of hypotheses of sub-
stances and of the absolute, 20 ff. ;
an energy system the simplest unit
of, 35-36; as a property of energy
systems, 52 ff . ; of things, 62-73;
question of kind to be assigned to
consciousness, 115 ; in what way en-
riched by consciousness, 135-141 ;
time and, 251 ff. ; form and, 307 ff.

Real space, nature of, 225-247.

Reid, Thomas, quoted on primary and
secondary qualities, 84.

Relational theory of space, 207 ff.

Relations, things and, 92 ff . ; space,
time, causal, and logical relations,
100 ; of interest, 105-106.

Relativity, a fundamental characteris-
tic of energy systems, 35—36, 50-51.

Religion, requirements of, 357.

Rhythm, a characteristic of energy,
49-50.

Richards, T. W., on the compressi-
bility of atoms, 229.

Royce, Josiah, " The Problem of Chris-
tianity," cited, 28 ; solution of prob-
lem of relations offered by, 94 ;
quoted concerning time, 272.

Runeberg, Swedish poet, on relation
between art and nature, 112.

Russell, Bertrand, works by, cited and
quoted, 96 n., 170, 228, 246.

S

Santayana, George, on consciousness
and process, 140 n. ; "Winds of
Doctrine," quoted, 327-328.

Schiller, F. C. S., emphasis placed on
creative contribution of the cogni-
tive relation by, 98 n.

Schiller, poet, reference to, 308.

Schopenhauer, on will, 172.

Science, and the attributes, 389-390.

Self-realization, fallacy of doctrine of,
346-348.

Sensations, distinction between sense
qualities and, 89-91.

Sensory elements, physical nature of,
166-167.

Series aspect of space, is ideal construc-
tion, 215-216.

Shaftesbury, on the kinship of the
ideals, 308.

Sheldon, W. H., articles on "A Theory
of Causation" by, cited, 103.

Simplicity demanded by ideal activity,
318-319.

Social experience as a test of objectivity
of things, 72.

Social interactions, postulates of, as a
type of energy system, 42-44.

Social minds, individual and, 191-204.

Socrates, references to, 333, 349.

Soddy, quoted, 242.

Space, the divine truth of, 6-7 ; psy-
chological, 208-215 ; geometric, 215-
224 ; nature of real space, 225 ff. ;
proofs of existence of, 226—234 ; prop-
erties of, 234-243 ; objections to
real, 243-247 ; discussed as one of the
five attributes, 385, 397-398; in-
sisted upon as an attribute by mod-
ern science, 389.

Space relations, 100.

Space zero, conception of a, 226, 397.

Specious present, time and the, 255-260.

Spencer, Herbert, antinomy of extension
and force, 21; adjustment, 41, 348.

Spinoza, vision of universe held by, 4 ;
confusion of form with activity by,
330 ; conception of the attributes
of, 386-389.

Stout, G. F., definition of "mental"
and "mind," 164; cited, 166.

Strutt, R. J., exposition of electrical
theory of matter by, 23 n.

Stumpf, reference to, 166.

Stuff, as one of the five attributes,
385. See Energy.

Subattentive, suggested use of, 392.

Subconsciousness, accounting for men-
tal processes by, 187.

Subjective idealism, theory of, re-
garding mental processes, 130-132.

Subjectivity of consciousness, 146-147.

Subject-object relation, 155-163.

Substance, the conception of, 385.

Substances, hypothesis of, 20-27.

Succession, limitation of consciousness
of, 260.

Sumner, Francis B., researches by, 213.

Systems, see energetic, logical, geo-
metric.

Teleological idealism, 360 ff.
Teleology, a new, suggested, 368-378.
Temporal and the eternal, 261-264.

412

INDEX

Things, question of existence of, 62 ff. ;
causes of the present-day antipathy
to, 62-69 ; pragmatic significance of,
69-73 ; pragmatic view of, 74 ; find-
ing reality of, by their qualities, 74-
83 ; interpenetration a fundamental
law of, 83-84 ; problem of relations
and, 92-107; and values, 107-112;
survival of, may be conditioned by
values, 111.

Thomson, J. J., "Electricity and Mat-
ter," quoted, 22.

Thought, physical aspect of, 169-170 ;
effect on friendship, 193-194 ; light
thrown on nature of, by geometry,
219-220.

Time, the divine truth of, 5-6 ; the
nature of, 251 ff. ; concepts of
motion, causality, attention, ac-
tivity, etc., under a timeless system,
251-252 ; absence of meaning and
judgments under timeless system,
253 ; and the psychological present,
255-260; the temporal and the
eternal, 261-264 ; pragmatic char-
acter of, 264-273 ; and the judging
process, 273-282 ; to be regarded
as non-serial, 283 ; and the problem-
atic, 283 ff . ; as a new dimension,
286-288; knowledge of the future,
296-303; as one of the five attri-
butes, 385 ; insisted upon as an at-
tribute by modern science, 389 ;
discussed as an attribute, 394-397.

Time relations, 100.

Titchener, E. B., "A Textbook of
Psychology," cited, 139.

Transformation of values effected by
time, 394-397.

D

Unification of ideals, 307-309.

Unit characters in Mendel's law, 81-82.

Unity, of the self, 180-184; type of,
which dominates social minds, 203 ;
in ideals, 316-317.

Universality, the law of, an abstrac-
tion, 267 ; demanded by ideal ac-
tivity, 319-320.

Universe, not dependent upon con-
sciousness, 148.

Validity and form, 338-344, 401-403.

Value, of conduct as explained by dy
namic theory of the self, 188-190 ; at
tempt to identify the types of, 309

Values, things and, 107-112 ; how sur
vival of things may depend upon
111; relation of consciousness to
136—139 ; consciousness cannot de
cide between, 140-141.

Vitalism, view of, regarding evolution
365-368.

W

Walter, H. E., "Genetics," quoted, 81
Whitehead, quoted on fundaments

concepts in mathematics, 207, 215

221-222.
Wikner, Pontus, monograph by, cited

74.
Will, viewed as measurable as to quan

tity, 1 17 ; character of mind dis

closed by mental acts as, 171 ; de

pendence of, upon physical instru

ments, 172 ; the modes of the, 173

is the mental part of what is callei

"mind," 173-174.
Wilson, E. B., cited, 83.
Woodbridge, F. J. E., quoted concern

ing consciousness, 121.
Work as a measure of energy, 34.
Worth, of conduct, explained by dy

namic theory of self, 188 ; of socu

minds, 203.
Wundt, quoted on dual nature of th

self, 155.

Z

Zeller, "Aristotle," quoted, 363.
Zeno, conception of space by, as "n

thing," 225 ; objections of, agains

Pythagorean conception of spac<

244.
Zero, property of absolute, a propert

of cosmic space, 242-243.
Zero space, as a limit in conceivin

Newton's first law of motion, 229.

Printed in the United States of America.

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY

Los Angeles
This book is DUE on the last date stamped below.

'59

Form L9-25m-8,'46 ( 9852 ) 444

A 001405662 6

LIBRARY